I was a Warren fan at just the right moment to latch onto The Rook by Bill DuBay and Luis Bermejo. As the collection notes, these are stories "from the pages of Eerie", a magazine which at this point in time shifting away from the one-off horror tales which had defined it as a younger version of Creepy. Eerie was giving the world offbeat heroes from across the span of space, time, and imagination, many with a decidedly anti-heroic nature. One of the good guys was Restin Dane, a handsome swashbuckling adventurer who just also happened to be a marvelous inventor and who became master of time travel.
 |
| (Gulacy's cover as published -- minus the fabulous details.) |
The first stories of The Rook saga are far and away the best. In these stories, collected under an robust Paul Gulacy cover presented for the first time in all its detailed glory, we meet Restin and his ancestor Bishop Dane, his robot assistant Manners, and others who fill the rough and tumble adventures with heart and specific character. These stories have the whipsaw charm that time travel stories can deliver with twists and turns coming at a breakneck pace.
The second volume of The Rook Archives is quite good as we continue to follow the temporal-challenging adventures of Restin Dane and his cohorts. But the gloss is beginning to come off the creation just a bit. There is a certain formula which is settling in to the story telling which cuts against the freshness which had marked the earliest issues. Also attempts at comedy fall a bit short of hitting the mark and that always leaves a bad taste in the mouth.
Among the highlights in this tome are a beautiful story drawn by the incomparable Alex Nino. Also quite strong is the final story entitled "Quarb and the Warball" which revives the uncanny sense of time travel and also is based to some extent on fan ideas. Luis Bermejo does an absolute fantastic job on Bill DuBay's script.
The crossover with the Vampirella magazine is a focus of this volume and it's a perfectly good story, but not the best in the volume by any measure, save for the ability to look at the lovely Vampi and her associate Pantha.
With the third volume of The Rook Archives we see the end of the first phase of Rook adventures. Luis Bermejo leaves the strip and to my eye much of the charm which he brought to the characters especially the lovely ladies is lost. Stepping in to fill that void are capable artists like Alfredo Alcala, Jim Starlin, and Jim Janes, but none of these captures the fragile essence of the Rook. We get instead stories which seem interchangeable in many sci-fi comics.
Also there becomes a fixed story telling notion that Restin Dane, the titular Rook will act alone while in a parallel story his elder Bishop Dane and his robot Manners travel lines that will ultimately intersect with the primary story, if not directly then thematically. Frankly it seems that after establishing the cast in the earliest stories, Bill DuBay doesn't quite know how to manage them all. He clearly wants to move on from the Alamo stories, but can't seem to drop the cast. The girls especially have almost nothing to do and disappear entirely in certain tales.
The advent of Lee Elias is a good move as his lush black lines go far to recall the Bermejo original artwork. But for most of this volume he is not present. It's fun sci-fi with that specific Warren flavor, but nothing in these stories really says "Rook".
Rip Off
If you read no other Rook stories, read these presented in The Rook Archives Volume 1. These are the ones which fixed the character into the popular imagination. He would become arguably for a time Warren's most popular character and his run only ended when his creator Bill DuBay left Warren for other climes.
The second volume of The Rook Archives is quite good as we continue to follow the temporal-challenging adventures of Restin Dane and his cohorts. But the gloss is beginning to come off the creation just a bit. There is a certain formula which is settling in to the story telling which cuts against the freshness which had marked the earliest issues. Also attempts at comedy fall a bit short of hitting the mark and that always leaves a bad taste in the mouth.
Among the highlights in this tome are a beautiful story drawn by the incomparable Alex Nino. Also quite strong is the final story entitled "Quarb and the Warball" which revives the uncanny sense of time travel and also is based to some extent on fan ideas. Luis Bermejo does an absolute fantastic job on Bill DuBay's script.
The crossover with the Vampirella magazine is a focus of this volume and it's a perfectly good story, but not the best in the volume by any measure, save for the ability to look at the lovely Vampi and her associate Pantha.
With the third volume of The Rook Archives we see the end of the first phase of Rook adventures. Luis Bermejo leaves the strip and to my eye much of the charm which he brought to the characters especially the lovely ladies is lost. Stepping in to fill that void are capable artists like Alfredo Alcala, Jim Starlin, and Jim Janes, but none of these captures the fragile essence of the Rook. We get instead stories which seem interchangeable in many sci-fi comics.
Also there becomes a fixed story telling notion that Restin Dane, the titular Rook will act alone while in a parallel story his elder Bishop Dane and his robot Manners travel lines that will ultimately intersect with the primary story, if not directly then thematically. Frankly it seems that after establishing the cast in the earliest stories, Bill DuBay doesn't quite know how to manage them all. He clearly wants to move on from the Alamo stories, but can't seem to drop the cast. The girls especially have almost nothing to do and disappear entirely in certain tales.
The advent of Lee Elias is a good move as his lush black lines go far to recall the Bermejo original artwork. But for most of this volume he is not present. It's fun sci-fi with that specific Warren flavor, but nothing in these stories really says "Rook".
Rip Off
Luis Bermejo is, of course, associated in Britain by those of a certain age with a character called Johnny Future (previously known as The Missing Link) in the weekly comic called Fantastic back in the '60s. The comic mainly featured Marvel reprints, but Johnny Future held his own against them for the first 51 issues. You can see these adventures on my blog, should you so wish.
ReplyDeleteI'll definitely check it out. Thanks.
Delete