Let's talk...with our fists!
(No Spoilers)
Picking up directly from where issue 4 left us, the group finally comes to some realizations that cause them to go from a group to a team. It's good to have the creative team of writer Howard Mackie with artist Ian Churchill again. I feel the stronger issues of the title so far have been the ones with both of them on board. This narrowly beat out Stormwatch as my favorite book this month.
Ravagers has been a fun title since it launched in Wave 2 but has had some distractions. We've had other artists on the book in such a short time and while they haven't been bad, they don't come close to Ian Churchill. His art is one of the reasons I enjoy this book so much. He does a great rendition of each character and in this issue, he gets to have a little fun as we see the kids in normal clothes instead of their superhero costumes. It's little details like this that always make me appreciate an artist more.
The zero issue last month basically just showed us the origin of Terra and Beast Boy since technically the "origin" of The Ravagers was revealed in The Culling crossover where the title sprang from. So while the zero issue was good, I was happy to get back on track here with the story. There's some interesting character moments as we see the group starting to realize why they must band together in order to survive. Even Superboy who guest stars gets a little revelation which I wonder if it'll be carried over into the "H'el on Earth" crossover happening in the Super titles.
Because the zero issue will be included in the trade, the first arc had to be wrapped up here. I kind of wish they would've had one more issue to focus on what they were setting up here because the ending seemed a little forced. Definitely a classic ending to a team book, but you could tell Mackie had to squeeze it in there for the trade.
Ravagers is such an under-rated book in my opinion. I've been having a lot of fun with it and it's got a great creative team. Mackie always has me wondering where we're going next and now that they team has survived their first arc, I'm anxious for the next one.
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