feature Comic book review - Raze Issues 1-5

Writing: Samuel Willis & Tremayne Primm
Story Boarder: Benjamin Willis

Letter: Samuel Willis
Inker: Joshua Christian
Editor: Madison Carter

Age Rating: 18+

Where to get it: Our store here.

Plot:

Raze follows a band of people stuck on Bear mountain bridge when a Zombie apocalypse breaks out. They try to outrun and survive the attack of the living dead, they’re running out of time.

Not many Indie comics in the sub-genre of Zombies and the living dead have memorable stories. Raze is a rare piece that works on many levels. The story, between the issues, progresses from one difficult location to another. Both locations have their own share of challenges. The story becomes both progressively wrought with tension and goes in some fun directions. There are some moral dilemmas, trials and tribulations that our characters have to go through. I also love that it’s quite thin in exposition. This adds to the tension in a big way. In a way origin of this “disease” doesn’t matter in the larger scheme of things in the book. The zombie apocalypse is here in the book, there’s no turning back. Issue 3 and 4 is where the meat of the story lies, but every issue is unique in its own way. The story movies really fast and takes a big turn in issue #4.

The book has a very diverse set of characters. We slowly see the traits of each of them reveal over the course of the 5 issues. Women characters are strong and central to the plot. Kudos to the writers for writing 3-dimensional woman characters who are actually crucial to the story. The characters are cocky misfits who are thrust into a situation with each other. They don’t love each other exactly and have to learn to work together to survive.

The books also shift and blend genres as they move along. While horror is a big part of all the issues, Issue #5 is very much rooted in the action genre, issue #2, #3, #4 are tense thrillers too!

The book draws its references from George Romero’s movies ( the claustrophobic setting of the Junkyard ) , Zack Snyder's movies ( like the bus overturning scene ) and also The Walking dead ( the cars strewn on the bridge scenes ). However, it’s a wholly original story. The art styles shift a bit in the later issues, especially in Issue #5, and almost resemble manga in terms of  art styling and how loud some panels are with both the sound effects as well as the backgrounds. The facial expressions are relevant to the scenes. The only nitpick I have about the book is, the dialogue is a little clunky at times. For some weird reason, especially in Issue #2 dialogues don’t flow very well. All other issues do make up for it though.

All the art is black and white. Despite quite a bit of blood and gore, Samuel’s writers and artists make black-and-white work really well. It does suit the story at hand and at any point, we don’t find the colours missing at all! The inking team has gone out of the way to make sure of this and gory panels especially from Issue #1 are gorgeously drawn and inked. Also, the focus is not the gore, it’s used sparsely to make sure the effect is both brutal and crushing.

The sound effects in the book, especially the living dead ones are great. Issue #1 and Issue #5 are my favourites. Issue #1 focuses on violent sound effects, whereas Issue #5 sound effects are more in the action, adventure genre.

If you love horror and the zombie apocalypse genre, Raze is the book for you and I recommend it. It moves at a brisk pace, takes some really fun turns and never turns down the tension. Grab a copy of all 5 issues on our shop today.