Reborn #1 Review

Reborn #1

Writer: Mark Millar
Pencils: Greg Capullo
Inker: Jonathan Glapion
Colours: FCO Plascencia
Letters: Nate Piekos
Publisher: Image Comics

A review by Stephanie Pouliotte

I’ve been looking forward to Reborn ever since I found out that Greg Capullo would be drawing this sprawling sci-fi fantasy by writer Mark Millar. I waited for nearly two hours at Toronto’s FanExpo to get a couple of Spawn volumes signed by the man himself and he was pretty confident that Reborn would be his best work yet. I have to admit, I was skeptical. I mean his repertoire is pretty solid and at that time I’d only seen a few ‘first look’ pages that were definitely great, just not totally mind blowing. But as more teaser pages dropped, I was floored by how fiercely epic this title was shaping up to be.

Now that Reborn #1 has finally hit the shelves, I know that Capullo wasn’t just talking the talk. He’s definitely channeling his years of experience drawing the dark and monstrous on titles like Spawn and Haunt, but from this first issue, it’s easy to see how the scope of Millar’s thrilling dark fantasy will bring out the best we’ve seen from Capullo yet.

Reborn #1 opens with a punch, as a lone sniper mercilessly guns down civilians in a Minneapolis coffee shop in 2002. Millar spares no pages in shocking the reader into the story, sending us careening into the afterlife as the victims wake up in a limbo dimension rife with war. Capullo’s amazing two-page spread draws us into this fantasy realm that is brilliantly lush, yet overrun by monstrous creatures. Our narrator, Bonnie Black, then pulls us back to the present in the world of the living; well almost living in her case. As she approaches her twilight years, Bonnie fears the darkness of her inevitable end and Millar takes a beat to explore this woman’s quiet suffering, encapsulating in just a few pages some of our deepest human anxieties. But what lies beyond the veil isn’t what she expected, as she is reborn a young woman with a sword at her waist, in the middle of a raging battlefield.

The pacing was extremely well executed; Millar moves between tense action and poignant character building, creating a balanced narrative. Capullo framed each moment beautifully, layering his panels as they flowed unobtrusively to the beats of the story. The combination made for a truly immersive read. When we’re thrown back into the chaos of the afterlife near the end, Capullo knocks us off guard with his dynamic lines and explosive penciling and Glapion’s inking really stands out in the dark and frenzied combat scenes. Plascencia’s colours tie the whole issue together, marking the shifts in time, space, and memory by a striking array of colour treatments.

Verdict
Buy It! Reborn #1 is definitely the title to buy this week and you should add it to your pull list. Millar and Capullo pull back the curtain in this issue and show us an afterlife that’s thrilling, gruesome, and absolutely epic. Also, make sure you check out the many amazing variant covers they released; my favourite one by Jock is below.