By Dustin Cabeal
My fear with this series is on display in the second issue of Reborn. It’s almost as if Mark Millar came to terms with his own mortality and arrived on the age-old question of the afterlife. He then came up with a pretty brilliant idea of the afterlife being a fantasy world in which we inhabit a random person’s body and fight an eternal battle for good and evil.
Millar lays down more of the “rules” of the afterlife in this issue. If you’re good, you go to the good side and all your good stuff is amplified. If you’re bad, you get the same done… but it’s evil! It was a strange explanation for sure. It was also entirely exposition and even then, felt incomplete. Like Millar wanted to keep some secrets from us and the main character but went about it in a way that was too obvious to miss. For instance, where’s Bonnie’s mom and husband? Seems pretty obvious to me, but according to her dad, there’s a lot of people spread out and blah, blah, blah. Except for the fact that everyone else she’s ever meet seems to be there with her, but sure… two of the most important people aren’t. Also, I hope you didn’t want to know what was up with that shooter in the first issue… that will not be addressed or mentioned.
The art continues to be some of Capullo’s best and if you don’t believe me just follow him on Facebook and he’ll be sure to tell you the same. Due to the nature of the story, the art is mostly just great set pieces and character’s standing around talking, but it all look very detailed and fantasy driven.
I’m not quite having flashbacks of Chrononauts, but this is a far cry away from Huck. I’ll continue to check out Millar’s work, but I don’t know if I’ll ever be head over heels in love with his stuff again. It’s a lot of high concept ideas, paired with top artistic talent, but there’s always something missing. Wish I knew what it was so I could add it to my review, but for now Reborn has me as a reader. For how long is up to the creative team.
Score: 3/5
Reborn #2
Writer: Mark Millar
Artist: Greg Capullo
Publisher: Image Comics