Rumble #2 Review

 

Story by: John Arcudi & James Herren
Colour art: Dave Stewart
Published by: Image Comics

Issue 2 of Rumble is quite a nice read, the story here starts in a mellow mood, but, like the first outing, the action is soon bursting out of the page. Rumble mixes monsters, swords and a few token humans. The dark elements are the best elements, the human story is a typical ‘awkward’ affair which plays out fine within the parameters of the book; the underdog teen is an overused trope of comics, think ‘Peter Parker’ and follow that through to ‘Kick-Ass’ and that is the element you have at play here. Luckily, the monstrous aspects of the story are more to the fore, and that benefits the book.
Rumble #2 IntArt for Rumble is an interesting mix. Clearly the darkness and monsters are the more fun parts for the artist, while the humans are not as accomplished – there is a raw kind of energy to the art, it is a little rough around the edges but it does fit the feel of the book.

The plot is a little disappointing, there are a number of elements at play and yet there is a lack of a cohesive narrative. We are given breadcrumbs intermittently though we don’t receive enough for this to be anything but confusing. In the first issue we were graced by an old soak of a character, a barfly of a man, who happened to have his arm chopped off by a strange creature wielding an impressively large sword. There is brief mention of Cogan (Mr Chopped Arm) yet there is no follow through, we don’t know anything more about what happened to him in the first issue, nor why the ‘thing’ who sliced Cogan’s arm off, is after him. That is just one of a number of similar parts to this story and it is a little irksome, and a failing of the script.

This book, if it were more of a cohesive story, mixed with the delicious dark elements, could be quite a solid read. The errors in the set up, allied to the overly raw human depictions, unfortunately drag this down from ‘quite interesting’ to ‘could be better’. It would be really beneficial to the book if they sort out the narrative flow. Should they continue with the flawed story, as it is presently, then issue 3 will be somewhat interesting but, overall, a little disappointing. That would be a pity, as I suspect that beneath the surface this has the potential to be quite good.