I took a little bit of a break from the comics over the last few days as I found myself spending such a large amount of time just getting so stupidly immersed into different stories and characters. As much as I had been enjoying them, I had to do other things. Though that didn't stop me from still researching up some new ones as I finished some others, or waited for new volumes from comics that are still running. While looking into the artist from Time Before Time, I let my eyeballs glide across his Instagram page as I rather enjoyed the art style and was curious as to what else he had worked on. His page detailed other comics, from him and from others. It led me to another comic called Rumble, published by Image Comics as well. At first I was a little hesitant to check it out. After all, I had been starting and dropping quite a few different comics as I searched for something new, and that was growing a little tiresome. I wouldn't say I'm a picky reader, especially in regards to general literature, but with comics also being a more visual form of media, I find I do tend to filter quite a lot of it out due to either the art style or the story which doesn't seem to hold my attention all that much. So, I read a bit of the first volume of Rumble and it didn't quite sit with me at first. Something felt off, but I decided I'd give it another go later on once I had taken that few days from reading.
Upon that revisit, I found myself suddenly flowing through the pages, really digging into it. That break must've done something good. But Rumble quickly picked up on me and I found the story odd yet intriguing. It felt genuinely different from the rest. Much like that charm of Time Before Time did as I read through it. Rumble's art style is a little more exaggerated, more cartoonish. And that's something I really like about it so far. There's clear stylisation that allows it to stand out a bit more, to look as strange as its story is: a bartender in some backwater location asks a customer for his debt to be paid finally, to which he's handed a note. Shortly after a strange being appears with a sword and starts attacking. None of it makes sense from this point, but it does take the time to give a bit more backstory to which I won't be reciting in all its complexities here. But I will give a short summary: this being had their soul removed and was imprisoned for thousands of years, to which once peace was finally established his soul was placed into another being upon request and set free. His soul is placed into a scarecrow which gives him a dark, cloaked figure and odd appearance. There are these strange creatures that also lurk around with their own agendas, all part of something else. Despite seeming like the villain, he's actually asking for help to get revenge.
I quite like the protagonist so far, which seems to be a below average guy that just works a job at a bar and doesn't have much else going for him. He's by far the hero of the story, far from being someone to jump into action. And that makes for a really interesting character with developments that see him conflicted and often running away from the problems. It's refreshing to see this in a comic after so many tend to have those over-confident hero types that seem fearless. It gave more weight to the opening story where so little makes sense, and this character with no real understanding of the world and no real prospects is now forced to believe in other realms and strange languages, creatures of the night that could be hunting him. Yet he still doesn't really understand the weight of what that means. He's all too listless. Funnily it's his more dimwitted best friend that ends up accepting the call to action with very little fear, being more loyal. Character development! And that's what the first few issues have been quite strong in, giving us a look at the characters, primarily our protagonist, and seeing how he constantly runs from anything out of the norm, leaving him in the same place, with the same wants and needs but never breaking out of it.
I've really enjoyed the moments of action and comedy in the comic so far. It's very much mixed with dark humour and chaos. It really reminds me of the world of cartoons and how exaggerated things can be. Definitely this is amplified by the art style of the comic which gives us fun perspectives and whacky looking characters of all sorts. But to add to this, the comic also shows the downside, the misery of the protagonist and his internal struggles. It adds a bit more depth to the story and its characters when they have those ups and downs, particularly directly as a result of the interactions they have with the world around them as everything grows more strange and unknown. A great force calling them to action, showing them a variant of them they didn't really know existed, which is great given that aforementioned idle nature of our protagonist that has never attempted to challenge that other side of himself. It's quite impressive how much of this is conveyed over so few issues, and without becoming a comic riddled with text.
There are fifteen volumes of Rumble and I'm about halfway through it at this point, but I still have no idea where this is going. It's a really intriguing story that seems to be going all over the place with little way of knowing where exactly it's heading. I think it's well-worth a read so far, and as far as I know there was some type of sequel that followed. Whether I get to that point or not is another question. Perhaps one to come with the full review of Rumble as I finished it.