BRZRKR 1 featured Reviews 

“BRZRKR” #1

By | March 5th, 2021
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“BRZRKR” #1 is a comic created and centered around a famous celebrity and was funded on Kickstarter by BOOM! Studios where it broke all kinds of records and generated a considerable amount of hype. So, is it a herald of a new age of company driven comic books using crowdfunding to generate obscene amounts of money while breaking away from the Big Two, or is it just another celebrity vanity project that generated too much hype and will be forgotten in a few weeks?

Personally, I hope it’s the former because I think it’s pretty darn good.

Cover by Rafael Grampa

Written by Keanu Reeves and Matt Kindt
Illustrated by Ron Garney
Colored by Bill Crabtree
Lettered by Clem Robins

* Discover the next blockbuster action franchise from the iconic KEANU REEVES in his Must Read comic book writing debut alongside New York Times best-selling co-writer Matt Kindt (Folklords, Bang!) and acclaimed artist Alessandro Vitti (Marvel’s Secret Warriors) in a brutally violent new series about one immortal warrior’s fight through the ages.
* The man known only as Berzerker is half-mortal and half-God, cursed and compelled to violence…even at the sacrifice of his sanity.
* But after wandering the world for centuries, Berzerker may have finally found a refuge – working for the U.S. government to fight the battles too violent and too dangerous for anyone else.
* In exchange, Berzerker will be granted the one thing he desires – the truth about his endless blood-soaked existence… and how to end it.
NOTE: This is for Mature Readers

“BRZRKR” #1 is about a nameless protagonist who is immortal and who agrees to work for the United States as a hired assassin in exchange for the ability to die. It’s important to note that he doesn’t want to die immediately, he just wants the option of dying. The first issue follows the protagonist on a mission to assassinate a thinly veiled proxy for the current President of Venezuela, but something happens to the protagonist that’s never happened before: he starts remembering bits and pieces of his eighty thousand year past.

The idea of an immortal super soldier who has lived too long is well trod territory in fiction, but “BRZRKR” #1 has a creative team that is able to bring one of the most realistic portrayals of such a fantastic concept. While Matt Kindt is the author that most comic book fans will know and appreciate, the real star of the show is the celebrity author: Keanu Reeves. “BRZRKR” #1 is a book that plays to both men’s strengths as creators and entertainers, Kindt gets to play around with memories and narrative flow while the book winds up being the kind of action vehicle that made Reeves into a superstar, mostly because it’s got a lot of high impact action and not a lot of dialogue. In fact, the book’s greatest strength is that it understands how to tell a story and develop a character without a whole lot of words. The protagonist barely says anything throughout the entire issue yet we get the sense that his psyche is a terrifying combination of anger, exhaustion, apathy, and blood lust that allows him to be less of an assassin for hire and more of a guided hurricane that you point in the general direction of the target and pray that the collateral damage isn’t too massive.

If “BRZRKR” #1 has any problems, it’s that it doesn’t seem too interested in developing a long running conflict with significant or interesting stakes. Sure, there’s the massive action showcase at the beginning of the book and the ending sets up the opportunity to show a series of flashbacks showing him fighting throughout history, but overall the book feels like it could just be a one shot proof of concept story instead of an ongoing series. Granted, there aren’t a lot of things on the planet that could threaten an eighty thousand year old immortal warrior, but outside of his quest for mortality there’s no reason why he can’t just quit fighting and obliterate anyone who tries to stop him.

Ron Garney provides the artwork for “BRZRKR” #1 and while the script has the job of showing what the mindset of an immortal and invincible assassin might look like, the artwork shows what said assassin’s handiwork might look like in the real world and holy cow is it bloody and brutal. How brutal and bloody you might ask? There is a part of the comic where the protagonist literally has his nose blown off and keeps going like he just got stung by a bee. Garney is an artist who has done quite a bit of work for Marvel, specifically for Wolverine and the Punisher titles and his heavy lines, sketchy style, and commitment to detail on the gorier bits of murder and killing serve him very well in this book. In fact, if you ever wondered what a Wolverine story might look like if the artist was allowed to pull out all the stops and had no qualms about showing what actually happens to the human body when it’s being diced to pieces by claws and guns, then you should give “BRZRKR” #1 a read.

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That’s not to say that the artwork is all gory sensationalism, there’s quite a bit of nuance as well. The sketchy style of the art is great for showing off some beautiful detail in close ups of the character’s faces and Garney is fantastic at drawing beautifully detailed clothing and tactical gear. Couple this with Bill Crabtree’s color schemes that use red and blue contrasts for great effect in order to help the reader separate who is where, what is going on, and what the specific emotion the characters are feeling at a certain moment. It’s a book that knows how to use the tools of comic book art to enhance the book in such a way that it looks simple, yet gorgeous at the same time.

“BRZRKR” #1 is a book about an invincible assassin who is so tired that he is willing to get his nose blown off to get the job done, so pissed off that he doesn’t care who or what he obliterates in order to complete his mission, and so bored with his immortality that he is actively seeking the means to die just to make his life more interesting. It’s a book with some big names attached to it, but don’t let that distract you from a well crafted book with some beautiful artwork and compelling action.

Final Verdict: 9.1- While it really lacks a long term narrative, it’s still an awesome example of visual storytelling with an interesting take on the immortal super warrior character and beautiful gore.


Matthew Blair

Matthew Blair hails from Portland, Oregon by way of Attleboro, Massachusetts. He loves everything comic related, and will talk about it for hours if asked. He also writes a web comic about a family of super villains which can be found here: https://tapas.io/series/The-Secret-Lives-of-Villains

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