Rai: the book of Darque #2

[Dallow Spicer1]

What could have been!

Dan Abnett comes up with a great concept of magic v technology, Darque v Father. Rai is a composite or technology and organic, which side will he pick?

Well forget all that, issue 2 is just a vehicle to lead into The Valiants series. I lay the blame squarely at editorial give this atrocity. Too many characters crammed unnecessarily into a story, characters we haven’t seen for years just all show up together and it’s supposed to make sense?? Once that happened I got bored, they had a big fight with with Darque forces, then Timewalker shows up and takes Rai away and then it turns out Dr Silk is behind everything

The art is exceptionally bad, check out the weirdest looking Gilad you’ve ever seen!

1.5/5 - massive let down

[grendeljd]

Unfortunately I thought this issue was a bit of a let down from #1 overall.

“The Darque” entity was interesting enough as a future projection of an evil sentient entity of sorts, from the scant details we got about it… was this thing meant to be a connection to the present day events of Book of Death, where Master Darque was turned/fused into a tree at the end? (Am I right in remembering that detail? It’s been a while since I last read that series!)

I was scratching my head a little on the way the joint nanoswarm was utilized here… I enjoyed the idea of it and how it effectively acted like a massive swarm of piranhas, stripping literally everything from the environment in its area of effect, but why was it only a one-shot deal? Why would the nanites be destroyed by such an action, wouldn’t they just be charged up by consuming mass and energy like that? Are there no longer any nanites in RAI or Raijin now? That’s not a great idea. There was no attempt at a credible reason for any of that to be the case, which made it all feel like a shallow mcguffin plot device - and that’s ultimately a shame as I really thought it was a cool idea otherwise.

The Valiants team led by War Mother was kind of a fun idea for a supergroup of the future, I enjoyed seeing most of those characters from various other 4001 stories all getting together. I can’t recall who SAI is off hand, I will have to back-check some of those other 4001-era comics for her.

I do hope this group doesn’t just get treated like a generic superhero team. There is a clear reason for them to have joined up during this “Howling War”, which is good. The dialogue between them all was a bit clunky and generic though - no really exceptional characterizations happening, always a danger with a “superhero” group dynamic. I hope this pattern doesn’t continue in any future stories with the team.

Lastly, the art was a little sub par compared to the 1st issue - it’s still generally pretty good but there is a more exaggerated shift in the cartoonish style of character faces and expressions which I didn’t like as much, and the worst aspect was the very sloppy portrayal of Gilad. Not just in the weirdly lumpy/goofy facial expressions, but also his very disproportionate body size. The dude is not The Hulk or a <insert generic strong super-hero guy here> type!