Review: The Culling: Rise of the Ravagers
Quick Summary
Pros: The volume starts out alright. The action is fun at times.
Cons: Most of the book ranges from below average to downright boring. The final battle is almost completely devoid of suspense. The main villain ends up being a disappointment. The artwork is inconsistent and overall poor.
Overall: This is a substandard book that gets a few things right and a lot more wrong. Bloated fight scenes, a lackluster main villain, and a general lack of excitement make it hard to enjoy this read. The crossover also fails to live up to its own hype and feels more like a minor bump in the road than the epic event it was billed as. Overall, this volume will likely be a disappointment for many fans and is not one that most readers should go out of their way to pick up.
Story
The first crossover event for the New 52 versions of the Teen Titans, Superboy, and Legion Lost ends up being a big letdown and a poor comic overall. The Culling: Rise of the Ravagers, by Scott Lobdell and Tom DeFalco, starts out alright and has a few shining moments but is otherwise a mess of lost potential and boring storytelling. The main negatives come from the volume’s inability to generate excitement and the failure to deliver a story worthy of having a crossover. These flaws leave the book feeling hollow and are sure to leave many readers disappointed in the material.
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The Culling starts out with some promise. It throws three separate groups of heroes together in a unique environment for a unique purpose. The society that has been created at the Crucible seems complex and has plenty of avenues for exploration. Plus, the possibility of a full out battle royale is always on the horizon.
However, the entire situation quickly deteriorates. Instead of building up the new characters and pitting friend against friend in battle, new characters are mind controlled and essentially become brainless vessels for combat. They are they quickly dispatched before readers even get a chance to know then. This makes moments that should elicit an emotional reaction, like Artemis’s death, feel hollow instead of inspiring. This cripples the book’s forward momentum and is where the volume’s early potential starts to fade away.
The rest of the book then becomes an extended battle against Harvest and a slow evacuation of the Crucible. Though a fight against a powerful enemy like Harvest should be exciting and fun, here it ends up being a rather boring ordeal. The heroes simply volley different attack strategies at Harvest while he mocks them. Some of these attacks are interesting and show off the different teams’ abilities; however, after the third failed attempt, all excitement is lost.
This final battle is also damaged by the fact that Harvest is only barely a credible villain. Though he is introduced as some sort of high-level threat, his actions here mostly revolve around blocking attacks from the heroes. He does little on his own besides ramble on about how everything is going according to plan. He is certainly powerful but seems incapable of actually doing anything, besides manipulating some vague scheme that has yet to be fully explained. In general, Harvest is another example of The Culling‘s ability to waste potential.
In addition, the fallout from The Culling does not live up to the hype. After building up this epic showdown in three separate series, the end result is quite a disappointment. Instead of being a major event for all parties involved, The Culling is more of a minor shakeup designed to kickstart The Ravagers series. This may work out for The Ravagers, which seems to have potential, but provides less benefit for the other series involved.
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Art
The Culling brings together a rather large creative team with a rather diverse set of artistic styles. Brett Booth, R.B. Silva, Pete Woods and more all contribute pages to this volume. Though, individually, most of these artists do work that ranges from average to great, as a group, their artwork is less pleasing to behold. Jumping from one art style to a dramatically different one makes for a disjointed reading experience. This is furthered by inconsistencies in coloring and in general character design; for example, Superboy looks like a teenager in one chapter and an adult in the next. All of this makes an already poor reading experience even worse and ensure that this is not a book to recommend to most comic fans out there.
Continuity
The Culling: Rise of the Ravagers is a crossover story arc taking place across the Teen Titans, Superboy, and Legion Lost series. It directly follows the events of Teen Titans Vol. 1: It’s Our Right to Fight (Review), Superboy Vol. 1: Incubation (Review), and Legion Lost Vol. 1: Run From Tomorrow (Review).
The fallout of this crossover has a number of effects in several different comic series; this can be seen in Teen Titans Vol. 2: The Culling (Review), Legion Lost Vol. 2: The Culling (Review), and Superboy Vol. 2: Extraction (Review). In addition, the end of this volume spawns an entirely new series with The Ravagers Vol. 1: The Kids From N.O.W.H.E.R.E. (Review).