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The Covenant
It's summertime. Kids go off to camp to learn, grow, and play. However, when 13-year-olds Caleb, Pogue, Reid, and Miller's parents send them to Camp Iwahanee for the summer, it isn't for bonfires and canoeing. The boys discover they're next in line to become the Covenant, the most powerful Warlocks in the world. Unfortunately, 13-year-old boys with unlimited powers are bound to experiment. Four years later, when an evil haunts their old campground, the Covenant fears their childhood mistakes have come back... to haunt them.
96 pages, Paperback
First published September 21, 2005
7 people are currently reading
424 people want to read
About the author
Aron Coleite
36 books5 followersAron Eli Coleite is an American comic book writer, television writer and producer best known for his work on the Netflix series Daybreak, and Ultimate X-Men Comics.
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
October 21, 2018
great book.
October 30, 2010
I picked up this comic hoping that it would clear up some of the hanging plot threads from the movie, or at least be better than the movie. I was not dissapointed. The movie pretty much only resembled the comic in name & characters. Chase & Sarah were characters exclusive to the movie. Even the storyline was started from scratch. Sony has said that while this comic was put out as a promotional piece, it has nothing to do with the movie & is an individual story of it's own.
The comic's storyline starts with four young children (Pogue, Miller, Reid, & Caleb) heading off for a summer at camp. While they are there they are terrorized by one of the councelors, Jambo & discover that they are descendants of a legendary group of warlocks. They had no previous knowledge of this, despite their teacher (Twoberry) claiming that their fathers went through the same things when they were kids. The children use their powers to punish Jambo by giving him the image of the camp's resident monster, the Woods Hole Warlock. Flash forward to their teen years & the four have to return to the summer camp in order to stop a menace that is mysteriously sucking the souls out of a few of the town's occupants. Once there they run into an old camp buddy & find that nothing is as it seems.
Now the only thing that kept me from taking this book seriously at times was how it threw the image of the pentagram around. It is randomly inserted into the comic & the artist can't decide whether he wants it to be inverted (evil) or right side up (good). It's actually ironically done, since the first lines of the comic are about how overused & overmarketed the pentagram has become. There is often no explanation of why the pentagram was being used (or by whom). I assume that the inverted pentagram was to represent it being used by the "bad" character of the book, but since there is no explanation I'm not sure whether to blame it on a storyline oversight or the artist's mis-education. This kept me from seeing the comic as anything other than a good piece of marketing fluff.
The comic's storyline starts with four young children (Pogue, Miller, Reid, & Caleb) heading off for a summer at camp. While they are there they are terrorized by one of the councelors, Jambo & discover that they are descendants of a legendary group of warlocks. They had no previous knowledge of this, despite their teacher (Twoberry) claiming that their fathers went through the same things when they were kids. The children use their powers to punish Jambo by giving him the image of the camp's resident monster, the Woods Hole Warlock. Flash forward to their teen years & the four have to return to the summer camp in order to stop a menace that is mysteriously sucking the souls out of a few of the town's occupants. Once there they run into an old camp buddy & find that nothing is as it seems.
Now the only thing that kept me from taking this book seriously at times was how it threw the image of the pentagram around. It is randomly inserted into the comic & the artist can't decide whether he wants it to be inverted (evil) or right side up (good). It's actually ironically done, since the first lines of the comic are about how overused & overmarketed the pentagram has become. There is often no explanation of why the pentagram was being used (or by whom). I assume that the inverted pentagram was to represent it being used by the "bad" character of the book, but since there is no explanation I'm not sure whether to blame it on a storyline oversight or the artist's mis-education. This kept me from seeing the comic as anything other than a good piece of marketing fluff.
August 4, 2015
I'm a fan of the movie, and when I found this I thought either it was a comic book based on the movie in which case it will be terrible, or it was a comic book that was turned into a movie, in which case it had a chance of being decent. Instead it was a comic book based on the screenplay for the movie, which means it has none of the stuff I really like about the movie and doesn't fit into the world of the movie.
So, first off, the illustrations in the beginning are really cartoonish. You've got the sons of Ipswich going off to summer camp where they're getting schooled in being warlocks by some old warlock. Three of the four kids have the same names as characters from the movie (which I had to look up, because one of them is named Pogue? WTF?). They get some revenge on their bullying camp counselor, then skip forward 4 years which turns these kids into 40-year-old men who have lived a hard life, apparently. There's been a murder at the camp so they go to investigate and use their warlock powers to figure out that their camp counselor is now a demon or something. It was a little hard to follow with the flashbacks. I think it was also made worse by the fact that THIS HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH THE MOVIE.
Yeah, so I can't really recommend this for any reason.
So, first off, the illustrations in the beginning are really cartoonish. You've got the sons of Ipswich going off to summer camp where they're getting schooled in being warlocks by some old warlock. Three of the four kids have the same names as characters from the movie (which I had to look up, because one of them is named Pogue? WTF?). They get some revenge on their bullying camp counselor, then skip forward 4 years which turns these kids into 40-year-old men who have lived a hard life, apparently. There's been a murder at the camp so they go to investigate and use their warlock powers to figure out that their camp counselor is now a demon or something. It was a little hard to follow with the flashbacks. I think it was also made worse by the fact that THIS HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH THE MOVIE.
Yeah, so I can't really recommend this for any reason.
January 19, 2013
There were a few clever ideas in this story, but the artwork was slightly better than the actual writing's execution, which was inconsistent at best.
While the idea of the group of families linked together by magic has been done before, tying that into a variant on the summer camp/horror motifs made it a bit more interesting. Much of my problem with the writing was that none of the central characters was at all sympathetic. They were all jerks, including their magical mentor. That made it more difficult to care when they were at risk.
The artwork was good, some of the best I've seen from Tone Rodriguez.
While the idea of the group of families linked together by magic has been done before, tying that into a variant on the summer camp/horror motifs made it a bit more interesting. Much of my problem with the writing was that none of the central characters was at all sympathetic. They were all jerks, including their magical mentor. That made it more difficult to care when they were at risk.
The artwork was good, some of the best I've seen from Tone Rodriguez.
April 16, 2014
I'm someone that enjoys the film The Covenant unironically, so I picked this up with a gift card to Amazon hoping that it would pick up unresolved plot threads from the film, and elaborate/have more of Chase Collins, but I was disappointed. It wasn't a terrible comic, and at times I even enjoyed the art and the background on the Sons of Ipswich, but I wish there had been more included in this. Chase was my favourite character in the film, and by far the most interesting character, so it was really a let-down that he wasn't in this comic in any way. I would recommend this to people who really like the film, but beyond that, it was just an alright read.
October 23, 2023
I cannot recommend this for consumption. The more popular trend of showing holy as evil and evil as holy tired out a long time ago but it still exists for many who are looking to make a quick buck. The art was OK, not juvenile, but the content was very juvenile in how it played out. The movie had cheesy acting but here, the characters had cheesy dialogue and personas. Basically watching privileged kids flex their skills while being narcissistic to each other.
Flashback from 2001 to present (2005 at the time) and back and forth a couple of times, to see that everything is an illusion. The coincidences and threats turned out to be manufactured to test the boys' reactions and powers, something obnoxiously echoed in the unrelated movie "We Can Be Heroes". The boys are horndogs, some more than others, and immature. You thought you would get a tie-in to the movie but it delved into the demonic association of witchcraft more than the movie, and preached the pentagram as an ancient and holy symbol of harmony. Though the five points represent the five families, neither the boys nor their guide go further into the implications of this with the fact that there are only four families now, with a fifth one being corrupted, corrupting the harmony of the imagery the author gives. Even so, at least one of the fathers was also corrupted, in the movie, but that doesn't tie in here. The authoritative camp counselor, Jambo, who refers to himself as God and has an "Obey" tattoo on his arm, which allows the boys to quip that "God hates us", plays like a mockery of God and Believers, along with the perversion of what is holy.
Character Reference:
Flashback from 2001 to present (2005 at the time) and back and forth a couple of times, to see that everything is an illusion. The coincidences and threats turned out to be manufactured to test the boys' reactions and powers, something obnoxiously echoed in the unrelated movie "We Can Be Heroes". The boys are horndogs, some more than others, and immature. You thought you would get a tie-in to the movie but it delved into the demonic association of witchcraft more than the movie, and preached the pentagram as an ancient and holy symbol of harmony. Though the five points represent the five families, neither the boys nor their guide go further into the implications of this with the fact that there are only four families now, with a fifth one being corrupted, corrupting the harmony of the imagery the author gives. Even so, at least one of the fathers was also corrupted, in the movie, but that doesn't tie in here. The authoritative camp counselor, Jambo, who refers to himself as God and has an "Obey" tattoo on his arm, which allows the boys to quip that "God hates us", plays like a mockery of God and Believers, along with the perversion of what is holy.
Character Reference:
October 5, 2017
Book 1 of 10 for Personal Halloween Reading Challenge.
I'm...conflicted. You see, The Covenant is my favourite film, and I have been waiting for as long as I can remember to track down this graphic novel and read it, but now that I have I fear I built it up in my head too much. It was a good story, and a really quick read, but I feel like some parts irked me more than it would if I had read it when I was nine-years-old and had first found out this existed.
My main problem though, and I feel bad for typing this but, I cannot stand the art work! The boys are meant to be seventeen going on eighteen, why the heck do they look like men in their late twenties/early thirties! Yes, they were athletic characters, so drawing some muscle on them made sense, but essentially drawing them Wolverine with different hair is way, way too much.
If you are a fan of the film, I do recommend you read this, because it was enjoyable, but I did struggle with some aspects (mainly the artwork).
I'm...conflicted. You see, The Covenant is my favourite film, and I have been waiting for as long as I can remember to track down this graphic novel and read it, but now that I have I fear I built it up in my head too much. It was a good story, and a really quick read, but I feel like some parts irked me more than it would if I had read it when I was nine-years-old and had first found out this existed.
My main problem though, and I feel bad for typing this but, I cannot stand the art work! The boys are meant to be seventeen going on eighteen, why the heck do they look like men in their late twenties/early thirties! Yes, they were athletic characters, so drawing some muscle on them made sense, but essentially drawing them Wolverine with different hair is way, way too much.
If you are a fan of the film, I do recommend you read this, because it was enjoyable, but I did struggle with some aspects (mainly the artwork).
March 13, 2022
This is definitely from Top Cow. The art is great. The plot is interesting.
The writing seemed scattered, difficult to follow, though.
I can understand why a movie was created based on the plot.
Indeed, the movie helped solidify parts of the book that were gaping.
It’s a quick read.
I suppose if you’re a fan of the movie, it’s a great addition to one’s collection.
The writing seemed scattered, difficult to follow, though.
I can understand why a movie was created based on the plot.
Indeed, the movie helped solidify parts of the book that were gaping.
It’s a quick read.
I suppose if you’re a fan of the movie, it’s a great addition to one’s collection.
March 14, 2025
Choppy storytelling of four friends who go to a summer camp to learn their magical powers. They then save the city or something five years later.
January 11, 2010
I would have liked this more if (1) the teenage incarnations of these boys weren't quite so idiotic and (2) there wasn't a convenient memory wipe available when needed within the story. Seems like a set-up for a longer series, but doesn't seem worth pursuing.
December 3, 2015
This is prequel to the film, and its pretty good.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews