The Rage 1

With the amount of zombie-related media swarming around us, you’d think that society is already infected with some sort of addiction. Movies, TV shows, and video games (and so on and so on) all have within examples of very successful (and not-so-successful) apocalyptic settings and undead threats at the heart of their narratives. The Rage faces the daunting task of distinguishing itself among the massive library of zombie stories lest it becomes a part of the vast, faceless mob.

Pierre Boisserie attempts to provide to readers a different kind of zombie apocalypse: in this world, only children are infected with a feral-state inducing sickness. We see the world through the eyes of a slowly recuperating France a couple years after initial contact with the “virus.” All children are quarantined and isolated, cities undergo frequent security checks and heavily-enforced curfews, and, naturally, resources are scarce and hope is low. Though essentially par for the undead course, the added detail of having adults being immune turns The Rage into less of a struggle for individual survival (like The Walking Dead) and more of a struggle for an entire nation to deal with an epidemic (think 28 Weeks Later). A government – though more strained than ever before – still exists and manages to operate to the best of its ability. Seeing this well-realized setting breaks the mold of traditional every-single-human-is-dead-and-we-are-all-that’s-left zombie stories, and as a result, is exciting, if nothing more than just to see how a broken nation of people can come back from the brink of total annihilation.

Still, despite its novel concept, the conflicts and relationships between the characters leave something to be desired. Within the world of The Rage, despite all military efforts to quarantine and control the situation, a violent independent group called The Militia seeks to solve the virus problem through their own means (which pretty much boils down to killing all of the children). Though I understand a situation like “the end of the world as we know it” would create an unavoidable sense of fear and self-preservation, their efforts seem a little heavy-handed, especially given the context that the government is actively trying to cure the disease ruining the modern world. Is the Militia unaware? Does the Militia not care? These questions lingered in my mind as I read, and I could come to only one conclusion: the Militia are just jerks. I couldn’t pull any motivation from the Militia beyond just not liking the idea of having a cure for the disease, and when a comic tries to rise above the rest of the zombie-mania that has been taking our media in waves, not having compelling conflicts only weighs it down.

This predicament also unfortunately pops up in other character relationships. A glimpse into the past of the main character, Amina, shows her in the early stages of the outbreak, and it left me wondering how she and her husband ever functioned as a couple. I’ll try to keep it light on the spoilers, but I will just say that I honestly have no idea how she managed to be married a man who seems so caustic and unsympathetic. The relationship between them feel contrived and forced, only to serve as potential conflict in the future.

When trying to create a new vision of a world plagued by the undead/incurable, the content of the story – the meat – must be sufficient to carry the setting of world throughout the issue. Without the meat of a story for readers to chew on, the body that holds the story – the setting – might as well be left to rot. The Rage has the virtue of giving readers an interesting take on the overdone zombie setting, but without much compelling content to satisfy readers’ hunger, they may as well shamble to the next inevitable zombie comic (or TV show or movie or etc.).

To find out more about Titan Comics and their publications, shamble on over to Titan-Comics.com, where you can purchase The Rage among other titles.

Photo Credit to Titan-Comics.com.

Geek-o-Rama received a copy of this book for the purpose of this review. All thoughts, comments and opinions are those of the individual reviewer.