Rachel Rising: The Shadow of Death

Rachel Rising: The Shadow of Death

Do you ever feel like you have gaps in your CV? Just holes in your media catalogue which everyone seems to have filled already? Do you ever feel left or embarrassed out when people talk about something with immense passion, and you need to twiddle your thumbs and explain you haven’t read it? Pop culture FOMO? I have several of these chasms in my comic collection.

I’ve only read the first trade of Saga. This is sacrilege for a modern comic fanatic. Brian K Vaughan’s Shakespearian space opera is a seminal title. I know it’s brilliant. I just haven’t gotten around to it yet. I’ve missed out on a lot of Vaughan’s significant books: Saga, Paper Girls, Y the Last Man, Ex Machina… all slipped by me, but I somehow caught his weird little projects like We Stand On Guard and Pride of Baghdad.

I’ve not read a single issue of Invincible. Not even watched the Amazon animated series. I’m told its great. But something about it has never appealed to me. I read a compendium of Robert Kirkman’s other most notable title, The Walking Dead, when I was in university, and if I’m honest I found it a little dull.

I’ve never read a standalone The Flash title. The closest I’ve come is Geoff John’s Flashpoint, and I don’t think you can really count that. I honestly have no idea how this has happened. The scarlet speedster is such a fundamental foundation of the medium, its bizarre that I’ve never picked it up. I think it maybe because if you know DC comics, you know The Flash by pure osmosis. If you’ve read a number of J.L.A / Teen Titans / J.S.A books, you can recognise the differences between Jay, Barry, Wally and Bart.

We all only have so many hours in the day and so much cash in our pockets. We need to pick our battles. However, I feel like I need more Terry Moore in my life after reading this.

What am I reading? Rachel Rising: The Shadow of Death, Issues 1-6. Written and illustrated by Terry Moore.

What’s it about? Rachel Beck is having a bad morning. She’s just woken up in a shallow grave, with soil in her lungs a rope burns round her neck. She just wants to get home, have a long shower, and get on with her “life”. But there are strange things abound in the small town of Manson.

What’s good about it? Do you ever get the feeling whilst reading of “Well that’s strange.”? This has that gift of displaying the impossible through perfectly reasonable actions. It’s the mundanity and ease of the violence that had me rattled. It has that unsettling magic of a true horror title. Its surreal. I wouldn’t say its scary, I don’t think I’ve ever read a comic (or book) that scared me, but this comes close. The closest comparison for the feeling it gave me was House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski.

More current day comics need to be colourless in my opinion. There’s nowhere to hide in Black and White. The art needs to be top notch. Moore delivers the goods. His linework is fantastic. I think the lack of colours gives the violence more weight. Like having a music sting for a jump scare in a horror movie, splashes of expected hyper colour could cheapen the affect.

Terry Moore has a great grasp of the human condition. The little character beats make you believe these are people: No one is one dimensional. There are no flat characters. Everyone is driven by history of motives. Interactions feel layered. Visual story telling cues give the world depth through humour and pain.

What did I struggle with? God this is bleak at points. Because Moore has done such an excellent job of characterisation, any misfortune that befalls them feels like a real kick in the teeth. There is a lot of misfortune, unfortunately… There is a cliché in stories set-in small-town America that its full of weirdos and perverts, but with the news coming from stateside this may actually be an accurate reflection. Its real grim out there. Solving the strangulation of a young woman was never going to be rainbows and sunshine but I think this book zigzags across the tonal line.

I’m aware that all of Moore’s work is set in one universe and the separate titles do all tie together for a grand conclusion: Strangers in Paradise, Rachel Rising, Motor Girl, Echo and Serial are all interconnected. That’s a lot of reading to get some answers. It’s a bold move but a bit antisocial. Along those line, this trade collects issues one to six (out of forty-two total) and it leaves you in a more bewildering place than the start, and you start half buried in a ditch.

There is one big elephant in the room with this: Moore is a fantastic artist, but the leads are always just sexy women. Very generic, Hollywood style, classically and conventionally attractive. Its uncomfortably centred around the male gaze. It’s strange… I don’t feel like a sicko for reading Superhero books with athletically built women dressed in extremely tight or revealing gear, but bits of this made me look around to see if anyone was judging me. I think its because the characterization is so perfect. Black Widow or Starfire aren’t people, but Rachel feels like I could run into her in a bar in Massachusetts.

Would I recommend? If you like murder mysteries, or paranormal horror, I think you’d like this. If you value character work, you’d love it.