The Ravagers, Vol. 1: The Kids From N.O.W.H.E.R.E.

Ravagers (2012) #1

by Howard Mackie (Writer), Ian Churchill (Illustrator), Norm Rapmund (Illustrator)

A new series spinning directly out of "The Culling" crossover. Fairchild, brother and sister Thunder and Lightning, the monstrous Ridge, Beast Boy, and Terra are being pursued by Rose Wilson and Warblade, who want them dead at any cost. But even as they run from their enemies, they strangers turned allies have to contend with each other as well.

Collects: The Ravagers #1-7.

Genres: Comics, Graphic Novels, Dc Comics, Science Fiction, Superheroes, Graphic Novels Comics

192 pages, Paperback

First published May 14, 2013

About the author

Howard Mackie is an American comic book editor and writer. He has worked almost exclusively for Marvel Comics.

Reviews

[Jayson · Rating 2 out of 5]

(B-) 71% | Satisfactory
Notes: Oozing objectivelessness, it operates on obstinacy; okay at outset, it's often obnoxious, outright odd and out-of-order.

[Chad · Rating 2 out of 5]

How can a first volume of a series be directionless? Somehow, Howard Mackie and Scott Lobdell have managed it. Spinning out of the abysmal "the Culling" crossover in the Teen Titans books, Caitlin Fairchild leads a team of what had been Teen Titans pre-Flashpoint. They stumble along into dumb revamps of Teen Titans villains like Brother Blood and Rose Wilson. Brother Blood's power now is to control you once he touches your blood. How exactly does that work? First he has to stab someone and then he can control them while they are bleeding to death? Oh, he apparently can also talk his followers into skinning themselves and somehow still be alive. All of the characters in the book have the same characterization, angsty and whining about having lost their memories. The art while often solid is inconsistent because they can't keep the same artist on the book for more than 2 issues.

[Lost Planet Airman · Rating 2 out of 5]

Good art, decent but somewhat flawed story.

It has been a number of years since I read the original storyline "The Culling" in Teen Titans, from which "The Ravagers" sprang. This is a non-team of teens with superpowers -- Beast Boy and Tara will be familiar from previous incarnations of the DC Universe -- who were the victims of the villain Harvest and his attempts to harness their powers for death and destruction.

As with most of DC's recent publications, the book suffers from the usual comic fare -- those with powers all possess the bodies of supermodels, wardrobes to match, and the vocabulary of speechwriters, so there is always these additional layers of unrealism over a good story.

[Angela · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Ravagers have escaped from the Ravagers. They need to make their own identities within this new freedom. They are on the run from those who would take them back there or kill them.

It is a good introductory story and you do get a feeling of who all the characters are. I was only aware of a few of them pre 52, and its interesting seeing the differences.

A good read.

[Cale · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a follow-up from the Culling - a group of ravager wannabes under the tutelage of Caitlin Fairchild, is escaping. Can she get them to work together without self-destructing? The answer seems to be no, although not without a lot of hand-wringing and whining. The 'team' Caitlin leads is fairly unremarkable - only two are characters I was previously aware of (Beast Boy and Terra), and even they are pretty boring. There is a lot of action, fairly well-portrayed, but the rest of it gets really old. And it may be that it's part of the reboot, but Niles Caulder? Not in a wheel-chair? Isn't he the leader of the Challengers of the Unknown? Is that where this is going? I don't know, and I'm not going to go out of my way to find out.

[Kyle · Rating 2 out of 5]

Spilling out from the action of the abysmal "The Culling" event, I have to admit, I did not have much interest in these characters. I didn't want to give them a chance, but I did, and I wasn't won over.

Some okay art, some really boring storylines that plateau in the second issue. There really isn't much to grasp at here. In fact, whenever there is a glimmer of hope that something unusual or interesting might happen, the action hits a wall and ends up being typical and cliche.

Nothing new or challenging about these new challengers at all. I won't be reading this series any further.

2/5

[Oliver · Rating 5 out of 5]

My only complaint: Red Beast Boy

[Krzysztof Grabowski · Rating 2 out of 5]

Odrzuty po jednym z najgorszych wydarzeń z New 52, czyli " The Culling". Po wydarzeniach, jakie miały tam miejsce paru osobom dało się dać drapaka. Są to m.in., Fairchild, rodzeństwo Thunder i Lightning, potworzasty Ridge, Beast Boy (o czerwonym umaszczeniu, jeszcze się nie przefarbował?) oraz Terra. Reszta się nie liczy i szybko pada ofiarą barwnej gromadki złoli, jaką wysyła za nimi Harvester.

Także ponownie zobaczymy Rose Wilson czy Warblade, którzy są wyjątkowo skuteczni i co pomniejsi ocalali zdążą tylko złapać łyk świeżego powietrza, po czym padną. I dalej jest schemat, który przewija się przez te siedem zeszytów. Ktoś kogoś ściga, ktoś ucieka, albo się stawia i dostaje łupnia. W dodatku nie wiem skąd, ale Beast Boy ma "prorocze" sny, które ostrzegają go, kto zginie.

Postacie są słabo zarysowane i płaskie. Dlatego też już bardziej kibicowałem tym złym, niźli tym dobrym. Na szczęście warstwa wizualna jest całkiem fajna, choć nieco trudno mi wytłumaczyć motyw mycia się razem w jednej sadzawce, zwłaszcza siostra z bratem... No, ale może ja mam jakieś ograniczenia kulturowe...

Szybki akcyjniak, który najlepiej sobie dawkować po zeszycie, bo można odczuć znużenie poprzez podobne rozwiązania w de facto każdym zeszycie.

[Sean · Rating 1 out of 5]

Why does this exist? A spinoff from a terrible crossover event that explains nothing, adds nothing, and will not be remembered. Howard Mackie muddles through 7 issues of these supposed teens fighting random bad guys from random organizations. Nothing made sense nor mattered. It was embarrassingly bad writing however the dialogue was better than Scott Lobdell's on the previously mentioned crossover. Ian Churchill's art has seen better days as this was pretty rough and many times the art barely matched the story. Overall, this was a train wreck.

[Shane · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pretty dark stuff, but no matter how broken the author tried to make them, I just kept feeling that they were really good on the inside and they were never going to turn evil. I am super curious what Harvest's endgame is. Sometimes he seems like a good guy, but if he has good intentions he's really mean about achieving them.

[Sean Sexton · Rating 2 out of 5]

I continue my slog through all of the New 52 titles. This one was definitely sloggy. A number of young people with powers have escaped from some mysterious institution and team up to fend off people sent to retrieve them. Meh.

[Andrew Alvis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quite a decent read, definitely better than the whole "Culling" arc.

[superhero fan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Just hanging on to a five star i might change it to a four star later

[Rick Hunter · Rating 4 out of 5]

I just finished reading The Culling: Rise of the Ravagers not long ago and found a copy of this book on Amazon for really cheap right after completing that other book. I wanted to dive right into this series while the Culling story was still fresh on my mind. One of the things I was most looking forward to about this series was the inclusion of Caitlin Fairchild. I was a fanatic about all things from Wildstorm comics back in the 1990's and the group she was a part of back then, Gen 13, was a personal favorite. I absolutely love this character. I was disappointed that the rest of her original team weren't with her in this, but at least the Wildstorm characters are being used by DC now. I like Beast Boy and Terra too, but nowhere near as much as I like Fairchild.

Writer Howard Mackie hasn't written the best story ever, but he has managed to keep me entertained by throwing some cool villains at the team. Rose Wilson and Warblade from the Culling storyline follow the team right over to this series. Brother Blood also makes his first New 52 appearance. The relationships between the Ravager team members aren't written as well as what Scott Lobdell and others have given the Teen Titans. The story and the plot aren't even close to being as good as the Culling storyline. I guess my hopes were too high for this because it never lived up to my expectations. It was good, but far from great. Writing gets 3 stars.

The highlight of this series was by far the art. Ethan van Sciver worked on the most issues out of the 7 collected here. Too many other guys worked on the issue as well to remember their names. Usually, when you have that many artists on a series, the quality id up and down throughout. That never happens here because evidently, all those other guys are clones of Ethan van Sciver and they all deliver some fantastic artwork. Beast Boy and all of his transformations are the highlight of the artwork. Art gets 5 stars.

The story and art average out to make this a 4 star book. The story being the weak link actually reminds me the early Image comics when they had the best artists in the business, but lacked on writers. Maybe that comparison to Image and the use of former Image characters made me nostalgic, but I enjoyed this book a lot even without it having the best story.

[Patrick · Rating 3 out of 5]

Is it a great read? Not really, but it's a fun "building a team out of broken kids" book. And it gives me a lot more context for the disappearance of Superboy from the Teen Titans run (and I'm willing to bet his return as well).

Will I develop a long-lasting love affair with any of these characters? Not likely. I mean, we know the New 52 ends and I much prefer Rebirth as a narrative overall, but I'd say they are mostly solid characters with some interesting designs.

Really, this was an opportunity for DC to do something neat. The story of a madman doing lots of experiments to create new super-powered individuals leaves the door wide open for possible character designs (physically and personality). I don't know they met the potential there, but I don't feel they fell on their face either.

I got both volumes on the cheap at my local comic shop and I'm not disappointed yet.

On to Volume 2.

[Chris Lemmerman · Rating 2 out of 5]

Urgh. This series has so much potential, yet fails at every turn to meet it. The characters spend far too much time whining to be interesting, and no one has any kind of character arc at all. Even Fairchild is stuck in the same place for seven issues.

The art generally saves the book from being a complete write-off, but the fact that no one artist can pencil 3 issues in a row, leading to masses of fill-ins and multiple artists per issue, drags it all down. Plus there are obvious mistakes, with characters' facial hair changing between panels multiple times, and some panels which don't match the dialogue at all.

Things pick up a bit near the end, with issues 6-7, but that doesn't justify 5 issues of boring villains, whingy protagonists, and inconsistent artwork.

[Richard Rosenthal · Rating 2 out of 5]

This stories comes after The Culling crossover event. These are the kids that aren't accounted for by any of the other super hero groups involved in that story. Caitlin Fairchild saved this team from Harvest, but she didn't plan very well as she spends he first page of every issue wondering what she is going to do or if these kids can even be saved. I was sad to see a gratuitous display of nudity as a section is added where the kids just blow off some steam by swimming and are suddenly attacked. It adds nothing to the story. The story so far is mostly running away from Harvest.

I got this book and the next volume out of the five dollar box at convention. I would be really disappointed if I had paid full price.

[Lillian Francis · Rating 3 out of 5]

#0 Love Beast Boy so I'm happy with this. And I like Ian Churchill's art.

I don’t think this deserves a <3 average. Overall the art is good, although they seem to have trouble keeping hold of artists.
There’s a slightly weird Brother Blood story, then they’re taken to a ‘safe house’ which I’m not sure about. Except it appears Red Robin is behind it, so how bad can it be.
Superboy joins them (which doesn’t 100% fit with the TT run) and they run into a group of the ‘bad’ ravagers including Rose Wilson.

[Gateacre · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is very much in the style of the Teen Titans or Legion of Superheroes. A group of minor DC and ex-Wildstorm characters, its all pretty standard fare. Fairchild and Lightning make it interesting as strong female leads but, alas, are undone by the usual heaving chests and combat bikini's.
It's competently scripted and crisply drawn but its all been done before and there's nothing to set it apart. All very Vanilla!

[Jeremy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Between 2.5 and 3 stars. There's really not much going on for this offering. The art is good, the story, characters, and plot are all just kind of "meh". This has none of the charm and excitement that "The Culling" had. If it's not already canceled, I won't be continuing with the series.

[Auristella Zarate · Rating 4 out of 5]

Loved the action, it really kept me on the edge of seat.

[Ryan Viergutz]

A bunch of escapee superheroes from a gladiatorial arena find out there's a LOT more of them and try to form a coherent team. Pretty art, popcorn story.

[Timothy Villa · Rating 2 out of 5]

This had potential to be okay, but they're all so damn whiny. Maybe Vol 2 with a new writer will be better. Mackie did not do good work here at all.

[Paweł · Rating 2 out of 5]

Niedobitki z 'The Culling' próbują przeżyć jako uciekinierzy i nie dać się (trzem) oryginalnym Ravagerom. Najlepszą rzeczą w poprzedniej części była obecność Legion Lost oraz Teen Titans. Tutaj tego nie ma. Zostajemy z nieciekawymi i bezradnymi dzieciakami którym na siłę dano supermoce. A Beast Boy jest czerwony.