The Ravens Nest

The Rippaverse Delivers on Promises Made

Full Disclosure Prior To Me Writing Anything Else: I bought Isom #1 for $5 when it went on sale for Cover C and then bought Isom #2 at full price out of my own pocket. No one at Rippaverse Comics have asked me to write these reviews and I have not been paid to write these reviews. As a result, I’m coming at the comics only from the perspective of a long-time fan of comics for over 30 years. That’s all.

I honesty can’t tell you where the controversial elements are to these two books. Yep, those two issues are mine. I own them. They sit in my box with autographed issues of Dead Reckoning, Roll Initiative, Lazarus, The New Mutants, X-Force, Youngblood and others.

Isom, overall, didn’t disappoint me. We live in an age where comics have become the pulpit for writers wanting to absolutely preach to you from their pulpits and these comics contain nothing of the kind. Let me break this down by issue.

Isom #1 keeps it’s focus on Avery Silman, a retired superhero called an Except. He’s super-strong, fast, agile and can take a lot of punishment. This issue kicks off the Ill-Advised story arc. Avery has been called by his sister, Altona, to check on someone who might have fallen in with one of Avery’s old friends gone rogue. In the process, he’s disrespected, roughed up, thrown into the mix between someone named Yaira and a group called Alphacore, and then really gets his ass kicked. Without giving away any spoilers here, Avery decides that maybe he was a little hasty in his retirement and decides that maybe he’s the only one he can truly trust to find this missing girl and get her out from under his old compadre.

It’s a straight-up superhero story set in the fictional city of Florespark, Texas and there are superhero fights, cases of mistaken identity and actual consequences for collateral damage as well as villains with simple motivations. It’s not the works of Shakespeare, nor does it have to be. Some of the dialogue could use some tweaking but it’s not the worst I’ve read. Look, the dialogue under the Comics Code Authority was far worse and often came across as wholly cringe. Anyone having read an issue of a comic under them can attest but this isn’t that level.

Do I recommend this particular issue? Let me put it this way, if you missed the $5 on Isom #1, then you did yourself a disservice because I do recommend it. If you took advantage of the sale then, hopefully, that book is now in your hands and you’re enjoying it as much as I did.

Is it worth the typical $35 price tag? Let me break this down

I paid $19.99 for this one. This foil cover of The Incredible Hulk featuring the first appearance of Wolverine is one I’ve always wanted to see for myself from the inside. The problem is that actually owning it would cost me way too much. This foil reprint, as a collector’s item, seemed like the best price point so I picked it up.

In terms of story, the dialogue was painful in some parts to read. Wolverine was not the Wolverine that we’ve all come to know and love and his original suit…well, it’s close to the one we know and love but yeah, still not quite there if you know what I mean. It’s cartoonish, it was made to appeal to kids at the time and it doesn’t have but a fraction of the page count that Isom has. Isom #1’s entire mission was to introduce primary characters and establish them first, which it does and does so over the course of 96 pages. There are also some introduction to some other characters that may get their own books in The Rippaverse. What ads exist in Isom are for other characters and have to do with The Rippaverse itself.

The Incredible Hulk #181, by comparison, yes, introduces a now-iconic character alongside another but has more ads than a YouTube video. The old ads for X-Ray Glasses and other novelties actually detracts from page count and potential character development.

The First Issue doesn’t contain anything controversial. There are no divisive topics being discussed. It’s core premise is simple, straight-forward while not adding too much in the way of complexity and succeeds in the adage of “Always leave them wanting more.” It did and that’s why I bought…

Isom #2 doesn’t exactly flesh out every character introduced in the first issue. While I understand some felt this one fell off a little bit and they’re waiting for the third issue to drop to see if it comes back (aka The Sophomore Slump) I have to disagree here. Personally, this is one I enjoyed just a little more. While we do get some backstory on why Avery Silman retired the Isom name and hung up his suit, opting to start a ranch on Florespark’s outskirts, we also get introductions to new characters and the villain gets to build on the established motivations. We get another look at Alphacore, we get nothing else on Yaira who remains a mystery. That’s a well-played tactic in my opinion because good character development should happen in good time. For now, we just have to wait on who Yaira is, where she comes from, what it is she’s doing and why. We see how villainous Avery’s former friend has become, we get an introduction to a new form of terrible beasties that have attacked Avery’s ranch, seemingly unprovoked, an Except private investigator named Goodyng and Bloodruth, a woman mixing an Old West aesthetic with occult-like esotericism with a real penchant for the aesthetics of Dungeons & Dragons.

Eric, dude, by now I’ve already said Yes to Isom, you didn’t have to keep selling me on it…but damned glad you did.

Bloodruth and Isom have to team together to rescue one of his people from his ranch and with that comes a descent into hellish chaos that doesn’t move into Florespark. At present, the people of Florespark are unaware that the Tartarus-like cavern even exists.

The only problem that I see that exists now is that we now have a sort of war on three separate fronts. We have Avery getting in the mix between Alphacore and Yaira from Issue #1, Avery vs. his old friend, who’s already a suitable villain with Excepts of his own and now we have these beasts that seem to control elemental fire. This is where I understand it when some feel it fell off and I have trouble understanding which direction the comic is going to head at the moment but the page count expanded out to 112 pages and I think the next one, if the Ill-Advised story is going to wrap all loose ends by the third book is going to need to expand even further. I doubt every loose end will be wrapped as I know that there will be comics eventually for Alphacore, Yaira, Bloodruth and there’s even a band that seems to be headed by a Norse Pagan. The band was introduced in the first issue and that’s something you definitely want to catch. It raised my eyebrow for certain.

In any case Isom #2 is an even wilder ride than the first issue. It doubles down on action, packs a bit more punch and introduces that air of magic to things but shows you that it’s always existed before, no need to worry. It’s not just some convenient plot device, it’s there for a good reason, even if it hasn’t been fully established yet. A character like Bloodruth is sure to be there so that there’s no writing one’s self into a corner.

In the second issue (Cover B’s Art by Ethan Van Sciver,) we’re truly given a world of a superhero coming out of retirement, a world that already had superheroes existing within it, trying to do what they can against odds that can become very challenging in the worst of times and how they’re still just like us, dealing with problems we can all identify with and relate to. These are not mythical gods themselves in human form, invulnerable to everything, always winning because they’re “the good guys” but it’s also not nihilistic.

Issue #2 also wins my recommendation. I’m also curious to see how the third issue wraps all this together and still leaves room for everyone else to strike out on their own books to create that cohesive universe that I haven’t seen since the early days of Image Comics.

So now that I’ve dived into the actual covers of this comic book’s first two issues and have seen it with my own eyes, I have to wonder where the controversy really is. Eric D. July’s critics seem to harp on a lack of quality without truly explaining what they mean by that, when all else fails, they simply make accusations that aren’t true.

For years when we express dissatisfaction with the current state of comics, we’ve all been told, consdescendingly, “Well if you don’t like it then make your own!” or “Then just don’t buy it!” When we stopped buying them and the sales began their slump, we were called names for taking the very advice we gave. When Eric decided that making his own was something he was going to do and the success of it blew up, yes, I think it was jealousy and the fact that most got the whimpering shit scared out of them that perhaps the customer was absolutely right. The constant pandering won’t sell because the old name got slapped to it.

Eric July and his crew made superheroes, a majority of them black characters and the comic still sold. They are all original characters and they still sold. There are some white characters in there and they’re still interesting. What July proved was that, when it came to representation, it can be done and can be done in a way that draws people together rather than dividing people along those lines.

When I say that, overall, I enjoyed it, that’s true. The few criticisms I have come with something that I kept in mind that they’re probably not going to be optioned for movie adaptations right out of the gate but I think it’s gotten a grassroots movement behind it where the only direction is “up, up and away” from here. Every building has to have a foundation laid first and, in the first two issues, I think Rippaverse Comics is doing a fine job of that. The rest can be worked out along the way and eventually, the skyscraper will stand tall and strong just like the character of Isom.

If you’re as tired of the current state of comics from the major labels as it is then I would recommend checking out this comic book universe just for starters.