Nasser Rabadi

Improved 2nd Effort, Some Continuity Issues
Review of the Secret Comics graphic novel (Nov. 2019)

Trixie Cain: Blood Reaper is the 2nd comic from the team of writer Rabadi and artist Shawn Langley and letterer Joey Turnage following last year's Stardust. I follow Rabadi as well through his horror fiction novels and short stories. Trixie Cain is an extended 60-page comic (2 pages are fan art) so it is more of a long form work than their first effort.

I'm impressed with Rabadi's initiative, especially with the number of books he has published in only a few years. Trixie Cain does have a few issues of what could be described as continuity lapses or simply lack of attention to detail. I was actually confused as to whether it is the lead character or the vampires that are the Blood Reapers for instance. I'm pretty sure they were called the Bloods at one point, but in the synopsis it is stated that Blood Reapers are believed to be extinct? At one point a character pulls out a garlic gas pellet/grenade (nice new invention for vampire hunters) and says it is their 2nd one. So when was the first used? Never happened. At one point a Cain character's name is spelled as Cane. At one point a vampire that was previously one of Langley's fat slug vampires with a skull-type face suddenly has a face like the clown from Stephen King's IT for a single panel? There is a cutaway scene that jumps back in history to unrelated characters for a few pages for no apparent reason. The title pages are printed at the back of the book as if the entire book was a cold open as in some television shows?

All of the above may be minor quibbles, but you would expect a bit more detail in the copy editing and some background footnotes to explain some of the odd diversions esp. if they are some sort of insider jokes or shout-outs. A sequel is promised in the end, but I have also read that Rabadi was abandoning comics for novels, so all remains to be seen.

I picked up Trixie Cain: Blood Reaper as I have been interested in the recent increased activity of independent crowd-funding of self-published comic books, graphic novels, novels and novel translations via the Kickstarter & Indiegogo (for English language items) and Hooandja (for Estonian language items) platforms.… (lisätietoja)

A bit derivative, but a good first effort.

I am not a huge comics/graphic novel reader, but I will usually read several in a year. So only about 3% or less of my total reading. I was curious about the recent trend towards writers' own independent comics publishing funded through crowd-sharing campaigns on Indiegogo. Nasser Rabadi's and Shawn Langley's "Stardust" is the first of these that I supported.

The 28-page Black & White book contains the main 20-page "Stardust" story and two 4-page shorts: "Skorth" and "Coldness." "Stardust" and "Skorth" are sci-fi monster horror tales and "Coldness" is somewhat of a zombie/vampire horror story.

"Stardust" is quite inventive with a twist ending. It starts off with what looks like a de facto alien invasion where only a single survivor of the huge interstellar alien spaceship is left to wander the earth biding its time before taking revenge for the loss of its crew mates. The story has an element of Scheherazade & the 1001 Nights to it and the drawing design of the aliens borrows some Cthulhu creature traits from H.P. Lovecraft. So there are certainly derivative elements but the overall story is still original and disturbing enough on its own. "Skorth" and "Coldness" are perhaps too short to leave much of an impression, but Langley's hybrid-like monsters are well done.

Rabadi and Langley promise further tales based on their successfully funded first effort. It will be interesting to see what they come up with next.… (lisätietoja)