After pulling herself out of the ground, there’s something different about Rachel.
Creative Staff:
Writer/Artist: Terry Moore
What They Say:
Rachel wakes up at sunrise on a shallow grave in the woods and discovers the freshly murdered body in the dirt is her own. With events of the previous night a blur, Rachel seeks out her boyfriend Phillip. But Phillip has a new girl now and Rachel is beginning to suspect she rose from the grave for a reason… revenge! Don’t miss the Premier Issue of this haunting new series by Eisner and Harvey Award-winning creator Terry Moore!
The Review:
I spent a good part of the 90’s being a fan of Terry Moore and his Strangers in Paradise book, though I never got to finish it since I fell out of comics during that period as well. I made a small return a couple of years ago with the first volume of his Echo book, but it wasn’t what I was looking for at the time and didn’t get far. So when I found out that he was getting his books done digitally on Comixology and that he had a new series called Rachel Rising, well, ground floor time for the most part and I was eager to get into it and see what’s what. So while I grabbed the first issue, I didn’t get around to it for a bit but it was still haunting the edges of my memory, making it a book I wanted to get into by realizing that I was likely to really dig into it so I wanted to be in the best frame of mind for it to see where Moore would go.
The opening issue definitely plays to what we’ve seen out of some of the more popular black and white comics of the last few years and it’s easy to get a Walking Dead kind of vibe here, though in a very different direction. Comparisons are easy to make but it’s not the goal of things. What we’re introduced to here is a book that needed twice as many pages to truly sell a first issue because things do end rather abruptly and without the full on kind of tease that some readers really need. Opening with a young woman named Rachel dragging herself out of a shallow grave in the woods is a good way to start, and we see her making her way back home where she tries to figure out what happened the night before after she was supposed to be going out to meet people from high school with her friend Jet. Her memory from that night is gone, though there are snippets of “bad things” happening that flash in her mind. And seeing the damage to her neck makes her even more uncertain about what happened. Never mind all the dirt that she has to wash off of herself as that’s to be expected after being buried.
But what she does discover is that people she comes across can’t help but to think there’s something different about her. While one flashback gives us a look at how she was before the event happened, a mildly spunky young woman who is a bit reserved in some ways but wanting to be outgoing, it’s a good contrast to the now moody and somewhat empty young woman who knows something has happened but doesn’t know what. What makes it worse is that when she does come across people she knows, they either think there’s something different about her or outright say that it isn’t her. It’s unnerving for her and for the reader even with what little we know of her and it sets the mood well. But it’s so abrupt at the end with it that it’s almost off putting with how it does it.
Release Notes:
This comiXology edition of Rachel Rising comes with the main cover as released with the print edition and no other extras.
In Summary:
While we get a sliver of a look at Rachel here and some of the setting, it’s not a strong enough hook to demand you come back unless you’re aware of how Terry Moore works and the potential behind it. I thoroughly like him as a storyteller, both with words and visuals, and he sells it well here visually and hints at some of the story. But it’s not a grabber in either a big way or a subtle way. It’s intriguing if you’re willing to experiment though and it’ll certainly draw me back for more. His art style here is very good with familiar touches in character designs and the layouts but it also feels like some of it has more detail than I’m used to him as well. And while I do think he’s well suited to black and white work, very much so, the special back cover we get here shows that this might be a book that would be better served by color as well. There’s certainly enough to like here for Moore fans, but it doesn’t hint at enough of its potential to draw in those that are unfamiliar with his work. But I’m excited to see where it goes based on name value and past experience, so we’ll definitely be checking out more, something that wouldn’t have happened with a print edition.
Grade: B
Readers Rating: [ratings]
