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Posted in: Comics, Review | Tagged: black mass rising, bram stoker, dracula, fantasy, Gothic Horror, graphic novel, jodie muir, Theo Prasidis, tko studios
Black Mass Rising: A Plodding Dracula Sequel with Pretty Art
Black Mass Rising is a very pretty book, a gothic horror that takes place a year after the supposed death of Count Dracula. In Transylvania, a new demonic entity begins to terrorise a remote town, causing death in its wake, but a mysterious healer and Mina Murray arrive to prevent the rising darkness, the triumph of Satan, and the rumoured return of Dracula. They have to travel with a village girl to confront the evil and find out if Dracula has truly returned, encountering horrors and challenges along the way.
The story of Black Mass Rising can be considered "Dracula fan fiction" since it's a revisionist sequel to Bram Stoker's Dracula that rewrites the story to portray Dracula and Mina's relationship as a tragic romance instead of the horrific coerce of a young woman by a predatory, demonic older man. This Dracula is a young, sensitive, misunderstood goth. It was hard to see what the point of this story other than to tell a downbeat horror apocalypse in the wake of that revised doomed romance. Mind you, Dracula was never high art. It was a gothic potboiler that captured the anxieties of its time: England's fear of foreign invasion and the repressed Victorian fear of unleashed female sexuality. It's always the male fear of female sexuality in horror fiction and movies.
The horror of Black Mass Rising is predictable and doesn't really have a point. The plot about a team of heroes going on a journey to confront a great evil is completely run-of-the-mill – it's every Fantasy plot that goes all the way back to Lord of the Rings. It also feels slow and plodding and way too long. Too much of the story is wasted on characters telling each other about their agonized feelings, usually in close-up, over and over again. The identity of Dracula is so obviously telegraphed that by the time it's revealed at the climax over 100 pages later, it's completely anticlimactic and a bore. This is a problem with many comics these days, where characters spend too many pages and panels telling each other about their sad feelings, and even more pages and pages repeating those sentiments again several times. It's odd that editors don't tell writers that once is more than enough. Theo Prasidis' story would have been much better if it has been half the length and more concise. The only saving grace of Black Mass Rising is the artwork. Jodie Muir's painterly art that gives the book the feel a European feel, with the early parts of the book looking like a folk tale before turning into gothic horror, then apocalyptic doom by the climax. She deserves a long career illustrating graphic novels, as her work makes Black Mass Rising one of the classier-looking books in TKO Studio's catalogue.
Black Mass Rising would have been better if it was shorter and more condense. Instead, it wears out its welcome by being too slow, too long and appealing only to readers who fantasise about romance with Count Dracula.
Black Mass Rising is published by TKO Studios.
Black Mass Rising
5/10
An overlong, plodding fan sequel to Bram Stoker's Dracula that would appeal only to fans who think Count Dracula was a tragic, misunderstood Goth hero, but with very pretty artwork by a talented artist.
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