Dead Rabbit is a love letter to the rough justice pioneered by the likes of Frank Miller in the late ’80s and early ’90s. It’s dark and wickedly violent. Like most of those heroes of yesteryear, we get to see bad guys putting down bad guys. It feels wrong. It feels cathartic. In a time when the world is just as scary as it’s ever been, one man taking the visceral weight of crime on his own shoulders certainly revs MY engine. Anyone likely unsatisfied with our current socio-economic climate will likely find a bloody home in Dead Rabbit.
I love the name Dead Rabbit. It fills me with glee. It implies a dead thing rising from some unmarked grave to avenge itself. You cannot kill that which is already dead, right? The implications behind the hero’s name alone are deep and wide. In execution, the character is brutal. He uses artillery weapons, but favors brass knuckles. This is not Batman. This is something else much more sinister, and creator Gerry Duggan boldly doubles down on the seedy, under-bellied nature of this universe.
When we first meet Dead Rabbit, he is now older and retired from crime fighting (also stealing from criminals). He works at a place called “The Mart” as a “greeter.” His wife is paralyzed from the waist down. His life as he knew it is over, and this new life is forcefully shoving him into a mid-life crisis. This is why Dead Rabbit decides to get busy, yet again, kicking the pearly whites out of the stupid heads of some real scumbags.
John McCrea is the artist on the book and is doing a bang-up job capturing Dead Rabbit’s job banging up skulls. His art is, in a word, delicious. It is also disgusting. The content in this book is not safe for work, but here is a beautiful image that is.
If the creators of Dead Rabbit are being responsible, we will likely see a story arc that maintains the gritty realism of these bold choices and the natural fallout they would inevitably have. In a way, I don’t want Dead Rabbit to succeed, because, as fantastic as this notion might seem, violence for violence solves nothing; however, we can have a great time careening down the mountain of morality together.
Creative Team: Gerry Duggan (writer), John McCrea (art)
Publisher: Image Comics
Click here to purchase.
