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Pick of the Week: “Rom: Dire Wraiths” #1

By | January 16th, 2020
Posted in Pick of the Week, Reviews | % Comments

Rarely has a year so conveniently signaled the end of a cultural era as 1969, and it’s in this year that the revisionist events of “Rom: Dire Wraiths” are set. Fulfilling the promise of the late John F. Kennedy’s promise to put men on the moon by the end of the decade, the lunar landing captured the imaginations of the estimated 650 million people worldwide who watched it unfold live on their grainy black and white televisions. If Quentin Tarantino’s recent rewriting of another significant event from the Summer of ‘69 gives real-life horror a fractured fairy tale ending, then Chris Ryall’s script gives a malevolent twist to the event that caused mankind to gaze hopefully into the night sky.

Cover by Luca Pizarri
Written by Chris Ryall
Illustrated by Luca Pizarri, Guy Dorian, and Sal Buscema
Colored by Jim Boswell and Ross Campbell
Lettered by Shawn Lee

“Inhumanauts,” Part 1: In 1969, two American astronauts became the first humans to set foot on Earth’s moon… but they found something inhuman waiting for them! With Rom the Spaceknight nowhere in sight, can even the Earth Corp help prevent one giant leap for Wraithkind? Plus! Find out where Rom is in a special back-up story…

Ryall’s well-documented love of Rom IP is once again palpable even if the greatest spaceknight is conspicuously absent aside from a few panels in the issue’s backup story. In the character’s previous 14-issue solo series under the IDW banner and his integration into the other Hasbro properties via multiple crossover events, the efforts to make the character relevant to new readers has commendably not relied on Gen X nostalgia and Bronze Age trappings. Ryall and company have fearlessly reimagined the character and his sworn enemies, the Dire Wraiths, whose first volley against the planet Earth is depicted in the first issue of this three-issue mini-series.

Fittingly, the aesthetic of this first issue is decidedly analog both in Ryall’s on-the-nose writing style and in Luca Pizzari and Jim Boswell’s art, a departure from the digital veneer of IDW’s usual Hasbro offerings. It’s a welcome departure that goes hand in hand with the era depicted while slyly evoking (finally) the Rom universe’s newsprint origins. Seemingly by design, there’s a straightforward, albeit sometimes unabashedly melodramatic, characteristic to the storytelling. The famous real-life astronauts that descend to the moon’s surface, leaving the third in orbit, trade dialogue more befitting a Saturday night spent around the campfire than an incredibly complicated and historic moment in space exploration. The Dire Wraith invaders are prone to monologuing malevolence and a clumsy archness that at times reads comedic. For maximum enjoyment, it’s likely best to surrender to the book’s hokey Bronze Age vibe.

It’s difficult to know why the series, originally slated to hit stands during the 50th anniversary year of the real moon landing, might have been delayed. With its prestige-level (perhaps approaching more commonplace) $4.99 price point, the main story only spans 20 pages while the backup clocks in at five. Neither count would have much significance if the story itself didn’t seem bereft of a certain level of narrative bulk, particularly in the absence of the title character. The challenge of the book that it seems to willfully accept is to make readers not mind that absence by spinning a compelling yarn, but there’s a familiarity with this twist to the Apollo 11 mission. Readers may even make a connection to another Hasbro property in the form of 2011’s Transformers: Dark of the Moon if they haven’t already blocked Michael Bay’s critically-panned film franchise out of their minds. Even the landing’s real life broadcast interruption is recycled for dramatic purposes here as well. As the story progresses, the famous astronauts, who curiously go unnamed here, are beset by the small band of Wraith invaders on the moon’s surface and the story’s narrator is revealed to be Michael Collins, the often forgotten third member of the team who stayed in lunar orbit to pilot the Columbia module while the famous Eagle lander garnered all the glory. Ryall’s script cleverly sets up Collins’s heroism for the remaining installments by making him the caretaker of the Wraith’s method of escape from the moon’s surface. And not to bury the lede, but there’s another party of international astronauts in orbit around the moon in a station fittingly codenamed Griffin, a mythological lion/eagle hybrid often tasked with guarding precious possessions, in this case the historical made-for-tv mission. These fictional characters are straight out of the prototypical space explorer team handbook, but Ryall’s knack for quick characterizations by way of dialog hook the readers into these players even if their existence in the proceedings seems far-fetched, particularly in their Power Ranger-colored getups. Ryall also manages to infuse the urgent story with a bit of lighthearted humor. There’s an instance where a Wraith hunter’s unfamiliarity with the moon’s gravity makes it less than effectual in dispatching its prey as well as providing a bit of intentional physical comedy.

While some pages suffer from some clunky and confusing sequentials, Pizarri’s art is not without its throwback charms, particularly in the brushy ink work and judicious use of shading. It’s not hollow praise to say that there’s a workmanlike quality to the art. When a Wraith successfully takes a victim in the story’s final pages, Pizarri manages to evoke true terror even with some cartoony flourishes that reminded this reader of a less-exaggerated Sam Kieth and a slight departure from the style of the preceding pages. After a mournfully moody and visually arresting splash page, the backup story follows the events that preceded the lunar landing and readers are treated to their only brief glimpse of Rom in the issue as he and his Neutralizer tutor Nikomi respond to the warning flares of a fallen spaceknight-in-arms. The backup story’s art, provided by Guy Dorian and legendary Rom penciller Sal Buscema (likely on inking chores), maintains the vintage 4-color aesthetic of the main story as well as its shamelessly mawkish story beats as the Wraiths make their way to Earth via a portal as if drawing back a curtain. It begs the question of how they could be stranded on the moon at the main story’s onset, but it’s best not to dwell on these things. There’s a low budget quality to the storytelling that harkens back to ’80s cult sci-fi movies on VHS. Here’s hoping the remaining two issues pull out all the stops rather than pulling back on the reins. The creators are clearly having fun with this slightly gonzo bit of historical science fiction and readers should check their disbelief at the door if they want to do the same.

Final Verdict: 7.5 – “Rom: Dire Wraiths” makes no bones about flaunting its space race meets space opera meets sci-fi horror vibe. It would be easy to dismiss it as corny balderdash if it wasn’t presented with the utmost earnestness and handmade care.


//TAGS | Pick of the Week

Jonathan O'Neal

Jonathan is a Tennessee native. He likes comics and baseball, two of America's greatest art forms.

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