Monday, September 21, 2015

Graphic Novel Review: REVOLVER



The central character in REVOLVER is a young man by the name of Sam. Like the unnamed narrator of FIGHT CLUB, Sam lives a life that seem detached of much meaning. He works in an office in Seattle, spends his nights drinking at bars, and uses a lot of his free time to purchase needless clutter. However, while on his way to work one morning, the world suddenly seems to change. The stock market crashes, airplanes are flying into buildings all over the U.S., a bird-flu pandemic is sweeping Asia, and there are reports that radioactive material in Russia has disappeared. This is later followed by dirty-bombs exploding in major cities and the destruction of the city of Seattle itself. Sam wants to survive, but doesn’t know if he has what it takes. But when he wakes the next morning, the world has returned the way it was before. All the terrible things that happened have not occurred. The only thing that is different is that Sam remembers everything. This revolving between the two worlds continues every time Sam goes to sleep. He falls to sleep in one world, but awakens in the next. The skills and knowledge that Sam gains in the post-apocalyptic world are carried with him into this former life in the other world and he begins using that knowledge to benefit others. It’s never explained why or how, but Sam is a Revolver living in two different worlds.

Although I liked REVOLVER, I was rather disappointed by it. The art isn’t that great. The characters are flat and much of the dialogue and monologue is stifled. There isn’t a whole lot of originality going on. Things that happen in the story are never explained. The story doesn’t really get interesting until about 3/4ths of the way through and just when the reader becomes invested, the story ends on a kind of cliffhanger. Despite this, I still enjoyed REVOLVER. At the end of the book, I wanted more because I wanted to know how things finally turned out. Had the book been completely bad, this would not have been the case.

Overall, while REVOLVER features a somewhat clichéd plot and has several weak points, it has enough going for it to make it a decent read.

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