Broken Frontier

Rex is the kind of book that transcends the noir and revenge stories that it pays homage to. Ex-cop Bill Orlowski was framed five years ago for drug trafficking. He was a hero and prison changes him, until he is turned into a rabid dog set on vengeance.

Zezelj is probably best known for his collaborations with Brian Wood on DMZ and Brian Azzarello on El Diablo. So he is not a newcomer when it comes to visceral and savage books. Azzarello writes the introduction to this graphic novel stating that the book is "punk" and that Zezelj is "sculpting—not drawing—on paper." That’s a pretty bold statement coming from not only the writer of 100 Bullets but a former collaborator of Jim Lee. Actually Azzarello’s essay on his youth and the power of this graphic novel is a better review than anything I could write, but we all know that I’m gonna throw in my ten cents as well.

There is almost a lyrical quality to the script. Not so much in the words, but the way it flows. The intermingling of the revenge being acted out, the flash backs to the trial and the events of his incarceration, and the juxtaposition of the butterfly chrysalis analogy and the plate from the surprising last few pages make for the kind of story that one can imagine coming from Jello Biafra or even Henry Rollins (if the later weren’t so interested in laughs).

Rex, Orlowski’s prison escaping alter ego is a brute. The suffering that was his five years in jail turn him into a kind of amalgamation of Frank Miller’s Dwight, Marv and Hartigan, but unlike Rex’s Sin City counterparts, he never becomes a caricature. Early on, we are introduced to his brutal cause and as the events of the previous six years are painstakingly revealed to us, you begin to route for his blood debt. You want him to kill these people; it is the only justice that will fit the torture he has survived in the "tower of nine circles". That’s right when you read a vengeance tale that flows so gracefully and invokes the ghost of Dante; you know you are reading something special.

As to the pencils, they are unmatched by anyone working in comics today. As opposed to looking like line art, this book looks like it is made of Xeroxed photographs. The gritty sheen to the pages enhances the darkness of the story, but things look real, even when we know that they are fantastical. It allows for a unique suspension of disbelief that is so cinematic, it really is like watching a film.

The publisher has told that they will focus on reprinting Zezelj’s back catalog of non English graphic novels. This is as exciting to me as coming back to comics after ten years and discovering that Brian Wood, Warren Ellis and Brian K Vaughan were not new but had massive back catalogs waiting for me to read. A major talent is on the verge of being discovered here, and I am excited!