Mark Millar teams with superstar artist Greg Capullo for another big miniseries – but is it good? Read on for our review of “Reborn” #1 but be warned, there are slight spoilers within.
Written by Mark Millar
Illustrated by Greg Capullo, Jonathan Glapion and FCO Plascencia
MARK MILLAR & GREG CAPULLO join forces to create the smash hit sci-fi / fantasy story of the year: REBORN. Where do you go when you die? Not heaven or hell; somewhere else. Somewhere you have to fight to survive. Somewhere the people from the past are waiting for you—the good and the bad.
As someone who’s never been a huge Mark Millar fan, I went into “Reborn” #1 not expecting to enjoy this. Millar’s work has never really resonated with me, but he always seems to attract the right kind of artistic talent to any project. “Reborn” #1 is another big concept from Millar and while it’s a great looking book, it doesn’t completely thrill me the way that I was hoping it would.
“Reborn” #1 tells the story of Bonnie Black in her last days; she’s elderly and not in good health. Bonnie has lost her closest family in tragic ways, but she was destined to live a long life that will end here, in a nursing home. After Bonnie dies, she’s transported to the afterlife. This afterlife is a bit different from others: it is a fantasy world where you live out an adventurous life as a younger version of yourself.
Right off the bat, the biggest problem with “Reborn” #1 is that it doesn’t really get into anything that wasn’t already revealed in all the promotional material. “Reborn” #1 isn’t much more than it’s premise, but it can be. The story itself is light on moving things along. It’s pretty much all set up, and that is what kind of takes me out of it. Of course a first issue is there to set up the story; we aren’t going to get a lot of answers and that’s not what I’m asking for. What I ask for is to get something that wasn’t offered in the sales pitch. I want a bigger hook and, for “Reborn,” that could have been a little more of the afterlife. An extra couple of pages – or at least a tighter pacing – could have done a lot for this issue.
Bonnie Black is an interesting character and watching her deal with the concept of death is something I think we can all relate to. It’s a thing that exists in the back of our minds that we purposely don’t think about. It’s approached in “Reborn” #1 in a really heavy handed way but it gets us in the mind set we need to be in to connect to this character and the tragedy that she’s been through. Millar isn’t known for subtlety, but it does read well an emotional beat.
Greg Capullo is beloved in comic books right now for good reason; as lukewarm as I am on Millar’s writing, I absolutely loved everything Capullo did here. He’s spent the last few years of his career on “Batman,” so it’s nice to see him out of that. In “Reborn” #1, he gets to flex different artistic muscles and proves that he can do something more than action. The book opens with tragic violence and then moves into a different kind of tragedy. Capullo is able to do this seamlessly, and he does this without losing a step. His big, action heavy sequences pack the same kind of emotional weight as Bonnie laying in bed does. Through expressive characters and subtle changes in body language, he’s able to convey a lot more nuance than the writing has.
What’s going to be fun about “Reborn” is when Capullo is able to really get into this epic fantasy style afterlife. Just the teases we get are exciting: the costumes, the scope and the bigness of it all is something I’ve wanted to see him do for a while now. This is different than drawing “Batman,” as it lets him get extremely creative. I want more of it and it’s going to be a big part of why I come back for the next issue. With this issue, Jonathan Glapion handles the inks and I think he does a nice job at bringing a certain level of boldness without losing the intricacies of Capullo’s complicated pencils.
Continued belowI’m glad to see FCO Plascencia working with Capullo on here because he hasn’t worked with a better colorist, ever. Plascencia does such amazing things with unexpected colors. Despite being a mature, darker book, he uses a lot of very bright color schemes and like Capullo, I can’t wait to see him really go crazy in the fantasy world. The glimpses we get are full of wonder and the colors are vastly layered, especially in the trees and grass.
“Reborn” is something I could easily like but, with a limited run, I wanted it to hit the ground running a bit more than it did. It will get a second issue to impress me but I can say that I enjoyed this a lot more than any other Millar written book I’ve read in a long time.
Final Verdict: 6.8 – A great concept but the first issue doesn’t offer more than that. The art, however, is fantastic.
