By Shawn Douglas, Cosmic Comix When a piece of comic book fiction stands out from the rest of the pack and from most of what plague the shelves each and every week I feel of course it is my duty to share it with you. When I read something that pulls me in and delivers on multiple levels it makes reading 90% of soul-sucking comics that make me want to stab my own eyes out worth it.
REX is one of these Marvels that makes wading through the horror of bad comics bearable.
One the surface it is a revenge piece about a wrongfully imprisoned police officer who loses the love of his life as a result as well as his place in the world bringing the bad guys to justice. Slowly giving in to the darkness he finds himself in the officer adopts the new persona of Rex and begins to train and train and train. Rex comes in as an athletic cop and by the time he breaks out of prison is a hulking, monstrous brute. He has two things on his mind: say goodbye to his lady love and destroying those responsible for the mess his life has become.
Underneath the surface story is a poetic depiction of revenge as music in pictures and revealing violence as beauty. The violent images dance in front of your eyes gorgeous in their hideous horror and you come to not only accept this but to wish perhaps to see more and welcome the perfect way it is presented on the finished page.
The writer and artist, Danijel Zezelj, has a style visceral and highly stylized which grabs you by the throat and forces your eyes open, to ingest the dark haunting images on the page as they climb up the smooth glossy windows of your soul and make their way into the gray matter of meat that sits between your ears, setting up shop there. Those that have been privy before to Zezelj s work on books like Hellblazer, Desolation Jones, and Loveless already know this in part though in Rex his talent seems to surpass his previous efforts. Maybe it s the contrast with the black and white instead of color being thrown in but I believe this is more to the extreme care you see from panel to panel as Zezelj knows exactly what he is doing and what kinds of emotions and feelings he wants them to produce in the reader.
This is not the same kind of revenge/crime comic you might find with other books. It does that kind of story too but it is also a very striking piece of art. Thanks in part to the opening introduction by Brian Azzarello I keep seeing Zezelj s poem of violence as a punk song brought to life. A death Metal lullaby to sing the deranged to sleep at night. Something to lay down with the lions over.
Just like Rex.
FINAL WORD: A haunting piece of art illustrating very well the idea of comics as music. It ll only cost you ten dollars and it is easily worth twice that. --Cosmic Comix
By Lee Newman, Broken Frontier
Rex is the kind of book that transcends the noir and revenge stories that it pays homage to. Ex-cop Bill Orlowski was framed five years ago for drug trafficking. He was a hero and prison changes him, until he is turned into a rabid dog set on vengeance.
Zezelj is probably best known for his collaborations with Brian Wood on DMZ and Brian Azzarello on El Diablo. So he is not a newcomer when it comes to visceral and savage books. Azzarello writes the introduction to this graphic novel stating that the book is "punk" and that Zezelj is "sculpting not drawing on paper." That s a pretty bold statement coming from not only the writer of 100 Bullets but a former collaborator of Jim Lee. Actually Azzarello s essay on his youth and the power of this graphic novel is a better review than anything I could write, but we all know that I m gonna throw in my ten cents as well.
There is almost a lyrical quality to the script. Not so much in the words, but the way it flows. The intermingling of the revenge being acted out, t --Comics Waiting Room
By Lee Newman, Broken Frontier
Rex is the kind of book that transcends the noir and revenge stories that it pays homage to. Ex-cop Bill Orlowski was framed five years ago for drug trafficking. He was a hero and prison changes him, until he is turned into a rabid dog set on vengeance.
Zezelj is probably best known for his collaborations with Brian Wood on DMZ and Brian Azzarello on El Diablo. So he is not a newcomer when it comes to visceral and savage books. Azzarello writes the introduction to this graphic novel stating that the book is "punk" and that Zezelj is "sculpting not drawing on paper." That s a pretty bold statement coming from not only the writer of 100 Bullets but a former collaborator of Jim Lee. Actually Azzarello s essay on his youth and the power of this graphic novel is a better review than anything I could write, but we all know that I m gonna throw in my ten cents as well.
There is almost a lyrical quality to the script. Not so much in the words, but the way it flows. The intermingling of the revenge being acted out, the flash backs to the trial and the events of his incarceration, and the juxtaposition of the butterfly chrysalis analogy and the plate from the surprising last few pages make for the kind of story that one can imagine coming from Jello Biafra or even Henry Rollins (if the later weren t so interested in laughs).
Rex, Orlowski s prison escaping alter ego is a brute. The suffering that was his five years in jail turn him into a kind of amalgamation of Frank Miller s Dwight, Marv and Hartigan, but unlike Rex's Sin City counterparts, he never becomes a caricature. Early on, we are introduced to his brutal cause and as the events of the previous six years are painstakingly revealed to us, you begin to route for his blood debt. You want him to kill these people; it is the only justice that will fit the torture he has survived in the "tower of nine circles". That s right when you read a vengeance tale that flows so gracefully and invokes the ghost of Dante; you know you are reading something special.
As to the pencils, they are unmatched by anyone working in comics today. As opposed to looking like line art, this book looks like it is made of Xeroxed photographs. The gritty sheen to the pages enhances the darkness of the story, but things look real, even when we know that they are fantastical. It allows for a unique suspension of disbelief that is so cinematic, it really is like watching a film.
The publisher has told that they will focus on reprinting Zezelj s back catalog of non English graphic novels. This is as exciting to me as coming back to comics after ten years and discovering that Brian Wood, Warren Ellis and Brian K Vaughan were not new but had massive back catalogs waiting for me to read. A major talent is on the verge of being discovered here, and I am excited! --Broken Frontier
By Avril Brown, Comics Waiting Room
REX is a story of rage and revenge. The dark, smoky art fits seamlessly with the plot, and adds to the blend of harsh realities and dark fantasies.
The opening page consists of song lyric-like passages which you see later in the story, right away setting an interesting tone for the book and leaving the reader unsure of where this story is going to go. The book jumps around in time, but the first scene gives enough background for the reader to learn about our protagonist, Bill Orlowski, also known as Rex.
Orlowski was a straight cop in a crooked city. After trying to take down the drug-running police chief, he was framed for trafficking and sent to prison for seven years. Everyone knows what happens to cops in jail, especially the good cops. Orlowski was beaten, mutilated and raped by villains he arrested, and the murky black and gray pencil lines emphasize the brutality of the scenes.
What happened to him in prison broke him, and essentially the man Bill Orlowski was died in jail. To exact his revenge, he had to become something more than a man. He started pumping some serious iron, and (seemingly) all of a sudden he s Rex, the one-eyed, gun-toting anti-hero, who is apparently impossible to kill. Disbelief must be suspended to fully enjoy the story of Rex s revenge as he survives bullets, explosions and drowning in an effort to kill those who killed him, as well as say goodbye to the woman he loved.
The most poignant scene in the book was a flashback. Ida, his love, the only one he believed in, tried to visit him in prison, only he refused to come and see her. She stood at the gate, a lone tear falling down her face. Right underneath that panel shows Orlowski, sharing that same tear, both mourning the death of a man.
The dramatic, shadowy lines meant close-ups of faces were hard to make out. The passages which seem to be song lyrics obviously tied into the story by dropping the name Rex, but their meaning was still vague and enigmatic. Truthfully I found the book a bit difficult to follow at first. Yet despite the gratuitous use of naked lady posters and the occasional blatant product placement, it is impractical to write this story off as a simple, shoot em up revenge bit. The butterflies which not-so subtly represent Orlowski s transformation to Rex are not the only symbolic tool used in this book. The primal emotion conveyed on some of the character s faces is striking. There s also just the slightest touch of humor in one memorable scene where Rex comes face to face with the man who put him in jail.
REX swoops in, punches you in the gut and swans on out without a hint of an apology. It can be a bit cliché at times, and not all of the scenes are easy to understand, but Zezelj makes it impossible not to take something from this book. Brian Azzarello, who wrote the forward, put it best: REX is raw. Most certainly not a typical prison break story, REX is nonetheless a powerful and emotional book that leaves a lasting impression. --Comics Waiting Room
