A Deep Dive Into RISE

Guest review by The 10,000 Comics Pyramid's MATT LOWDER . . . . .

RISE (2019-2020, Scout Comics, #1-6, first story arc, Don Aguillo art and story) 4.5 STARS out of a possible 5 Stars.

This may go down as one of the greatest missed opportunities and missed executions of any comic book I've ever read. This is possibly the most beautiful comic that I have read over the past 12 months, and I read over 1,000 issues.

RISE is a gorgeous spectacle of stylized and abstracted art with an incredible sense of line weights, colour temperatures on every two-page spread, every image and panel feeling like an incredible painting, and a story that is jam-packed with lyrical prose. It smacks of an amazing high fantasy novel of Brandon Sanderson proportions.

And yet in all of that lies a FATAL flaw. This book is not finished. Either it was too much work for the artist and writer, or Scout Comics didn't want to partner long term. 

This is barely scratching the surface of a MUCH longer fantasy story with a huge literary vibe. Words, words, words, narration, voice-over, paragraph blocks. There was so much writing, and so much world building and character dialogue interactions, that each comic felt like two issues of content. 

RISE fuses chapters of a novel and the comic book medium rather intentionally in its storytelling approach. The word bubbles are stuffed with paragraphs of text on every other page. The word count is much bigger than your average comic. This is a book for people who like descriptive, verbose writing and heavy world building.

The characters were pretty good but got lost in overly busy and wispy panels at times. The plot overall moved at a snail's pace. Very little forward momentum actually occurs with our main character Zakaiah, a little girl, and her ascension to take the throne after her royal King-and-Queen parents go missing, assumed dead. 

It is the 50th century, and the world has fallen away from science and most traditonal government structure, and has reverted to magic and faith. There is a faction within the leadership called The Ternion, three councilors or ambassadors of sorts who work adjacent and yet on equal footing to the ruling royalty who may use their resources to influence the lands and courts with checks and balances.  

But of course, in no time, they want more power and become usurpers. They don't want the girl to rise... they want a new way of life for the citizens. Meanwhile Bathazhar, a seer and mage loyal to the dead parents, constructs what I call "the fellowship of the Zakariah" and takes the princess on a quest where she must pass "trials of Jasser" to rise to the throne of Pasif'Kah. Then Ternion can't do anything. There's visions, abstract confusing fights, detailed hypnotizing art, and soulthieves, which are vampires but not quite vampires.

It's a long-winded ride that take forever to advance the story but gives you a metric ton of world-building and ideas to chew on: power, corruption, faith, moral relativism, tradition, burden, duty, survival, and the cycles of mankind over centuries. It almost would have been better suited as a novel with concept art in the back rather than a comic. There's so much in these six issues, which felt like the first 100 pages of a 700-page fantasy novel.

In the past 14 months, no indication or reporting that I can find give any indication that Don Aguilllo is actively working on this or plans to put out more. It's a tragedy. The art is some of the best art I've ever seen in comics.

Scout Comics bit off way more than they could chew, in my opinion. By Issue #6, Zakariah still has not completed her first trial. Nothing within the narrative is resolved. We've heard our "fellowship" of supporting characters talk about social law and history and motivations at length, and we are still being introduced to new characters, allies and villains. They take forever trekking through the wild to get to where they need to get to. And they stop for two of these issues at somebody's house for lots of long conversations and navel gazing.

Here's just one page's worth of narration from Issue #1:

"The royals indeed began to exhaust the Kingdom's faculties. Saddened, bake knowledged true limitations in their ability to ensure their kingdoms well being under the might of its own weight, even against the imminent Darkness pressing on its walls and those self aware of their shortcomings, striving desperately to compensate for them, their enemies among the ranks waited in the wings for emergent opportunity to end their rule. Historically, circumstances surrounding great tragedies are often veiled in mystery. Our fledgling Kingdom enjoyed no exception. The sudden disappearance of the King and Queen send the dominion spiraling into chaos and on the swift path to shambles. An exhaustive search depleted the Kingdom's investigative resources and the formal declaration of the passing of the King and Queen. The citizens and the newly orphaned princess were then lost. Often at dusk, the mourning Royal successor sits quietly in the shadows of her parents' memorial tomb quietly awaiting the dying of the light."

See what I mean? It's either a treat for you... or a huge pass depending on what you appreciate and enjoy.

There's beautiful poetic writing and jaw-dropping art that goes almost nowhere besides fleshing out the complex world. I savoured these, allowed my eyes time to soak in the full-bleed art. It's just dense writing. But I willingly, excitedly read the first issue twice, and it is probably one of the best debut issues that I have ever read. It was the best of the six.

An unusually high rating for me for something extremely attractive and ambitious. I don't think will ever be concluded. 4.5 Stars out of a possible 5 Stars.