FIRST ISSUE: MEN OF WRATH

An admirable first issue must, above all else, contain such matter as will compel a reader to buy the second issue. At the same time, while provoking curiosity through mysteriousness, a good first issue must avoid being so mysterious as to be cryptic or incomprehensible. And, thirdly, it should introduce the title’s principals, preferably in a way that makes us care about them. Fourth, a first issue should include a complete “episode”—that is, something should happen, a crisis of some kind, which is resolved by the end of the issue, without, at the same time, detracting from the cliffhanger aspect of the effort that will compel us to buy the next issue.

In the first issue of Men of Wrath, we become acquainted with the brutal history of the Rath family, chiefly, that of Ira Rath, who is a professional killer who learns he has cancer. His next assignment is apparently to kill his own son, Reuben, who is a blunderer of a thief. Will he or won’t he? That’s the question that this issue poses, creating the suspense that presumably will nudge us into buying the second issue.

Me? Probably not. The opening incident in the book gives us a complete episode. My criteria include a complete episode because such maneuvers show us the personality of the title’s protagonist, and we like and/or care for him/her as a consequence. But our appreciation of Ira Rath is scarcely fostered by this episode, which depicts him killing several members of a family, including an infant child. I don’t think I want to know any more about this guy — or his fate or that of his son. It’ll all be about as gloomy as this book, meticulously drawn by Ron Garney with a fine and unerring line and colored into dim recesses by Matt Milla.

Writer Jason Aaron says the book is inspired by his own family history in a long bloody cycle of Southern violence, “one that’s been passed down from father to son over the course of a century ... [and] will only end when everyone dies.”

Grim stuff. Serious artistic vision. But too brutal for my taste, thanks.