Review: Black Summer, by Warren Ellis and Juan Jose Ryp
The Hook: The most powerful member of a superhuman team created to fight organized crime and civic corruption decides that he must must fix the most corrupt system in the United States – the federal government – and assassinates the President, ostensibly giving freedom back to the citizenry. Chaos ensues.
The Details: The core of any superheroic tale is justice, whether it be for a specific group of people, or merely the heroes themselves. The allure of the superhuman is that they have the power to right the wrongs of the world where the average human cannot. Most injustice in superheroic worlds is represented by obvious, tangible villains – the evil and the misguided, who despite their nefarious plans, are something that heroes can take up arms against and definitively fight.
Were that only the case in real life.
What if there were superheroes in a world without massive, colorful villains? A world more like our own, where the greatest threats to justice often result not from any one person, but rather the dark side of a system of politics and greed? Confronted by this complex, less tangible threat, how far would a group of powerful superhumans go to see justice done? And how would the rest of us react? Black Summer is an answer to those questions.
Black Summer is a graphic novel collected from an eight issue comic series, written by Warren Ellis and illustrated by Juan Jose Ryp. It tells the story of The Seven Guns, a group of technologically enhanced superhumans who originally formed to fight regional government and corporate crime when traditional law enforcement could not, or would not, or was party to the crime itself. Although a true extralegal vigilante group, their continued positive exploits in the name of justice eventually earned them the trust of the public of the United States. That is, until the most powerful of The Guns, John Horus, assassinates the President and his advisers, and calls on the nation to hold immediate elections supervised by him to ensure impartiality and freedom of choice.
The resultant narrative focuses on how he and the remaining Guns (who were unaware of Horus’ intentions or plan) deal with the aftermath of that act, which forces each of them to confront their own beliefs about their role as superhumans in a society that suddenly views them as the enemy. In The Guns, Ellis gives us a complex group of individuals united by a common desire, but who otherwise hold very different beliefs about how the world works, and in some cases dislike each other. The story deftly flips between current events and flashbacks to the formation of the group, which serves to both drive the plot and provide some challenging explorations on power, justice, and responsibility. If all of that sounds like it might be too cerebral, rest assured that there is plenty of crazy violent action to balance things out – not only are The Guns hunted by the military, but it turns out that they face superhuman opposition after all.
Ellis’s narrative is tight and, for the most part, well-paced. There are a couple of points where the story pauses to accommodate an extended philosophical tirade that is just long enough to be mildly distracting, but this is a minor quibble. The flashbacks focus more on the relationships and motivations of The Guns than on the specific details about their powers or original missions, which fits perfectly with what Ellis was accomplishing with the story, although I must confess that the comic geek in me was craving a bit more fiddly detail about the world. All that noted, the tale succeeds as a thought-provoking and exciting read.
Ryp’s art here is focused on clean, detailed inkwork that is well matched to the tale at hand. Mark Sweeney and Greg Waller’s coloring does an excellent job of enhancing Ryp’s style. The story doesn’t skimp out on the violence of the combat involved, and everything from gore to explosions is drawn with almost mesmerizing intricacy. Unfortunately, this leads to several instances where it’s difficult to figure out what is precisely is being done to whom in a particular panel; this is also hampered by the fact that the main antagonists all have similar costume designs, which makes picking them out occasionally problematic. Despite that, the visuals are otherwise gorgeous and effective.
The Bottom Line: If you want a well-crafted and thought-provoking post-modern superheroic tale about power and justice, and looks great123 in the telling, Black Summer is for you. Recommended.
Tags: Black Summer, Cmaaarrr, John Cmar, Juan Jose Ryp, Warren Ellis
Wow – sounds fantastic. I don’t even generally read comics/graphic novels, and I’m interested in this one. If only there were a novelization – I do lots of those.
[...] weekly consultation is live at The Secret Lair, wherein I clinically evaluate the graphic novel Black Summer by Warren Ellis and Juan Jose [...]
@Greg – One might argue that a novelization of a graphic novel is a tad redundant.
In this case, Black Summer is 150ish pages, which makes it a fairly quick read, so might be right up your alley in the story length department.