A comiXologist Recommends:
Harris Smith recommends Revenger #1
Over the past few years, Charles Forsman (charlesforsman) has established a well-deserved reputation as one of the most insightful, challenging creative talents in the comics world. In books like TEOTFW, Luv Sucker, Teen Creeps and Celebrated Summer, he’s conceived stark, sometimes disturbing but always relatable depictions of disaffected youth, rendered with a kind of minimal beauty that hauntingly echoes Charles Schulz’s Peanuts, though filtered through the preapocalpytic teens-in-trouble drama of films like Over the Edge and River’s Edge. Forsman’s latest work, Revenger, is both a divergence from this and a natural extension of it.
Like recent comics such as Benjamin Marra’s (traditionalcomics) Terror Assaulter and Michel Fiffe’s (zegas) Copra, Revenger draws upon the aesthetics of 1980’s action, but while Marra’s comics have a streak of sardonic humor, and Fiffe’s work recalls the colorful insanity of the John Ostrander-Luke McDonnell Suicide Squad, Forsman maintains the bleak atmosphere of the his earlier work. Though it feels like something that could have come out of the Cannon Group in the 80’s (think Stallone in Cobra, as portrayed by a battle-scarred Grace Jones), and you can practically hear the John Carpenter-esque synth stabs punctuating the most dramatic moments while reading it, Revenger is decidedly without camp. It is powerful, violent and provocative, deadly serious and consistently thrilling. Forsman builds an atmosphere of nerve-wracking dread and maintains it relentlessly.
Revenger shows that Charles Forsman can create within the framework of genre without betraying his vision as an artist. It is a bold and striking step forward for him as an artist and I am greatly looking forward to both future issues of Revenger and to see how this expanded field of vision enhances his body of work as a whole.
[Read Revenger #1 on comiXology]
HARRIS SMITH is a Brooklyn-based comics and media professional. In addition to his role as a Senior Production Coordinator at comiXology, he edits several comics anthologies, including Jeans and Felony Comics, under the banner of Negative Pleasure Publications. He’s also the host of the weekly radio show Negative Pleasure on Newtown Radio.