Reborn: Book One

Back in the 1990s Image Comics was the place to go for comics that were not about superheroes it was a place to go to see what comics as an art form could be stretched toward.  Mark Millar is one of those visionaries he has been crafting his own stories for some time now with several of them becoming films and even some of them surpassing the original source material.  Reborn is one of those books.  Now I’ll be up front this book may not be for everybody.  There is a lot to like in this book but there are things that I did not like as well.

First off the art is simply spectacular as Greg Capullo is here to provide the art for this series coming fresh off of his run on Batman with Scott Snyder.  The book starts off with a sniper in a public place taking out unsuspecting victims.  One of the unlucky citizens wakes up in a green field much younger in what looks like something out of Lord of the Rings.  The hero of this tale is Bonnie Black a school teacher who is very pessimistic about the afterlife as she is in a nursing home and has lost her husband, mother, father and best friend.  When she dies she awakens in this realm in the middle of a warzone.  She finds out well she’s in this new land with a new lease on life and a younger body that she is the savior of this realm.  She discovers that she has some type of powers she is reunited with her father and her childhood pet.  She is on a quest to find her husband in this realm and along the way she finds her best friend.  At the end there is a big showdown between Bonnie and the demon like villain of this realm.

What I like about this book is this high concept of an idea that Mark Millar has come up with I like most of his books because of their concepts but I don’t particularly like his execution all of the time and this was one of those times.  I really liked the first half of this book but I just felt that he didn’t stick to the landing.  I also didn’t like the reveal of who the big bad was before he died.  It didn’t sit well with me.  I also didn’t like how bitter her best friend became when she discovered that her faith and beliefs had been dashed by this new reality.  This book leave lots of room for improvement, I had hoped that this would be a one and done tale like so many of Mark Millar’s books but sadly that doesn’t seem to be the case.