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Rough Riders
ROUGH RIDERS: LOCK STOCK AND BARREL, THE COMPLETE SERIES HC
Historical fiction at its most exciting!
Led by a young Theodore Roosevelt, a motley crew of soon-to-be American legends must work together to solve a mystery that threatens all of existence.
Harry Houdini - street magician and master of misdirection. Annie Oakley - a washed-up entertainer, eager for a chance to prove herself in a real war. Jack Johnson - an undefeated brawler and the son of ex-slaves, determined to get his shot at the heavyweight championship... When a terrifying alien technology destroys the USS Maine, these unlikely allies set sail for bloody Cuba, into the heart of a brewing conflict, to wage a shadow war against the greatest threat mankind has ever known. Before they were famous, they were... ROUGH RIDERS.
Created and written by Adam Glass (THE LOLLIPOP KIDS, MARY SHELLEY MONSTER HUNTER) with artwork by Patrick Olliffe (Untold Tales of Spider-Man), this robust hardcover contains the entire series, ROUGH RIDERS (1-7), ROUGH RIDERS ON THE STORM (1-6) and ROUGH RIDE OR DIE (1-4).
Led by a young Theodore Roosevelt, a motley crew of soon-to-be American legends must work together to solve a mystery that threatens all of existence.
Harry Houdini - street magician and master of misdirection. Annie Oakley - a washed-up entertainer, eager for a chance to prove herself in a real war. Jack Johnson - an undefeated brawler and the son of ex-slaves, determined to get his shot at the heavyweight championship... When a terrifying alien technology destroys the USS Maine, these unlikely allies set sail for bloody Cuba, into the heart of a brewing conflict, to wage a shadow war against the greatest threat mankind has ever known. Before they were famous, they were... ROUGH RIDERS.
Created and written by Adam Glass (THE LOLLIPOP KIDS, MARY SHELLEY MONSTER HUNTER) with artwork by Patrick Olliffe (Untold Tales of Spider-Man), this robust hardcover contains the entire series, ROUGH RIDERS (1-7), ROUGH RIDERS ON THE STORM (1-6) and ROUGH RIDE OR DIE (1-4).
- GenresComicsGraphic Novels
360 pages, Hardcover
Published December 17, 2019
19 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
December 15, 2019
Rough Riders is a great idea with good execution. It is an interesting cast of characters, with some of histories most fascinating people coming together to stop various threats to mankind.
It is not nearly as literary as The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, instead being more of an over the top, B-movie action fest, but it does have enough interesting character interplay to keep the reader engaged beyond the crazy action pieces and insane plots.
As long as you go in expecting a fun tine instead of a more literary one, Rough Riders is worth a read.
It is not nearly as literary as The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, instead being more of an over the top, B-movie action fest, but it does have enough interesting character interplay to keep the reader engaged beyond the crazy action pieces and insane plots.
As long as you go in expecting a fun tine instead of a more literary one, Rough Riders is worth a read.
June 23, 2020
The immediate comparison for this volume is The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Vol. 1, with its sepia-tone, time-period, large team, and running list of cameos. But instead of period-appropriate pulp fiction characters, here we have historical personages. Glass is also much kinder and more friendly to his audience than Alan Moore ever was, providing identification and context to his cameos instead of using them as a way of showing off how much smarter he is than the reader is.
I'd also like to see a bit less gratuitous nekkidity of female characters. Yes, there's a fair bit of shirtless Teddy, jack and Houdini in here too, but it flows much more from the story and isn't lingered on nearly as long.
Over all a fun tale.
I'd also like to see a bit less gratuitous nekkidity of female characters. Yes, there's a fair bit of shirtless Teddy, jack and Houdini in here too, but it flows much more from the story and isn't lingered on nearly as long.
Over all a fun tale.
January 3, 2020
The good:
Good production values on the hard cover. Glad to see nice oversize printing of the material. Frankly, I wouldn't have purchased and read this otherwise.
The art was solid.
The idea was top notch.
The other:
As someone who reads a fair bit of history this didn't feel enough like a period piece. To many things make sense from our future perspective rather than from the perspective of the time the book occurred in. One example, while DNA was discovered in the 1860s, the concept likely would not have been common enough to warrant it being commented on by Teddy Roosevelt to the rest of the team as we saw happen in the story. Little comments about social mores of the day not matching what we consider appropriate now are not unwarranted but were commonplace and felt unnaturally overused.
Good production values on the hard cover. Glad to see nice oversize printing of the material. Frankly, I wouldn't have purchased and read this otherwise.
The art was solid.
The idea was top notch.
The other:
As someone who reads a fair bit of history this didn't feel enough like a period piece. To many things make sense from our future perspective rather than from the perspective of the time the book occurred in. One example, while DNA was discovered in the 1860s, the concept likely would not have been common enough to warrant it being commented on by Teddy Roosevelt to the rest of the team as we saw happen in the story. Little comments about social mores of the day not matching what we consider appropriate now are not unwarranted but were commonplace and felt unnaturally overused.
June 28, 2023
2.2
This graphic novel did a really good job of catching my interest, which probably turned out to be a bad thing, because it was really disappointing. I feel like it's pretty hard to make a graphic novel that's all bad, though, because the medium is so inherently entertaining. Let's start with what I liked about Rough Riders.
The idea was pretty cool, and it didn't feel too generic or unoriginal, to me at least. The art style is pretty good as well, and, like I said, graphic novels are usually always gonna have some value, mostly because of the 'graphic' part. A couple of the characters are also pretty entertaining, Houdini being my favorite. And that's about it, so not much for the positive column.
Now for what I didn't like so much.
The biggest make-or-break aspect of any form of media is the writing, and it kinda felt like it was written by me in elementary school. It had fairly good exposition, but the resolutions felt rushed and were not satisfying at all. The writing also left me confused quite often, to the point where I was just not being entertained at all. Many of the plot points felt extremely rushed and didn't feel natural, for example, when the entire British fleet shows up out of nowhere, for almost no reason. It felt choppy, as if the writer threw out random ideas and didn't bother with molding a coherent story to adapt to them. Also, my copy had multiple spelling, grammar, and punctuation errors, which surprised me because I wouldn't think I'd see that in something like this.
I already said that a couple characters are entertaining, mainly Houdini. That being said, literally every other character was boring. The were very one-dimensional and not compelling at all. The characters felt like huge stereotypes that wouldn't dare step out of their assigned box, which made for 0 character development, the worst of all being Annie Oakley. They all felt overly caricaturized, which made them uninteresting, and made me focus more on how annoyed I was with the writing than the actual story. The addition of more historical figures felt like the writer injecting well-known characters into the story as a replacement for just creating actual good character development. Also, the Thomas Edison plot point of "Is he good? Is he bad? Now he's good again! Now he's bad again!" was dragged on too long and just made his character unbearable.
Speaking of story, the plot is really weird. This goes hand in hand with the writing, but I felt like I was being jerked to random storylines that didn't feel necessary or connected. I think that the idea of the "Rough Riders" could have had some really cool conflicts, but personally, I wouldn't have chosen aliens, cultists, and ghosts. It felt out of place and just pretty strange, in my opinion.
Overall, this graphic novel gets carried heavily by the art, which would be hard to mess up anyways, so it can't get that much credit. Although, it was still entertaining at times, just not enough times for it to be entertaining as a whole.
This graphic novel did a really good job of catching my interest, which probably turned out to be a bad thing, because it was really disappointing. I feel like it's pretty hard to make a graphic novel that's all bad, though, because the medium is so inherently entertaining. Let's start with what I liked about Rough Riders.
The idea was pretty cool, and it didn't feel too generic or unoriginal, to me at least. The art style is pretty good as well, and, like I said, graphic novels are usually always gonna have some value, mostly because of the 'graphic' part. A couple of the characters are also pretty entertaining, Houdini being my favorite. And that's about it, so not much for the positive column.
Now for what I didn't like so much.
The biggest make-or-break aspect of any form of media is the writing, and it kinda felt like it was written by me in elementary school. It had fairly good exposition, but the resolutions felt rushed and were not satisfying at all. The writing also left me confused quite often, to the point where I was just not being entertained at all. Many of the plot points felt extremely rushed and didn't feel natural, for example, when the entire British fleet shows up out of nowhere, for almost no reason. It felt choppy, as if the writer threw out random ideas and didn't bother with molding a coherent story to adapt to them. Also, my copy had multiple spelling, grammar, and punctuation errors, which surprised me because I wouldn't think I'd see that in something like this.
I already said that a couple characters are entertaining, mainly Houdini. That being said, literally every other character was boring. The were very one-dimensional and not compelling at all. The characters felt like huge stereotypes that wouldn't dare step out of their assigned box, which made for 0 character development, the worst of all being Annie Oakley. They all felt overly caricaturized, which made them uninteresting, and made me focus more on how annoyed I was with the writing than the actual story. The addition of more historical figures felt like the writer injecting well-known characters into the story as a replacement for just creating actual good character development. Also, the Thomas Edison plot point of "Is he good? Is he bad? Now he's good again! Now he's bad again!" was dragged on too long and just made his character unbearable.
Speaking of story, the plot is really weird. This goes hand in hand with the writing, but I felt like I was being jerked to random storylines that didn't feel necessary or connected. I think that the idea of the "Rough Riders" could have had some really cool conflicts, but personally, I wouldn't have chosen aliens, cultists, and ghosts. It felt out of place and just pretty strange, in my opinion.
Overall, this graphic novel gets carried heavily by the art, which would be hard to mess up anyways, so it can't get that much credit. Although, it was still entertaining at times, just not enough times for it to be entertaining as a whole.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews