Rachel Rising #1 by Terry Moore
Only two months after his last series, Echo, concluded, Terry Moore brings us Rachel Rising, his first foray into “horror” comics. So far, it’s a bit more “mysterious” than it it is horrific, but that’s hardly a bad thing.
Like Echo, Rachel Rising’s first issue doesn’t lay much out there. The first half of the issue is a purely visual sequence with the titular character literally rising out of the ground and (presumably) back to life. We’re told a bit about Rachel through brief flashbacks. Her best friend is Jet, a female mechanic who plays in a bar band and always refuses Rachel’s offers to set her up with a man. Jet is a classic Moore character, very much in the Katchoo mold. She’s tough without being manly. Jet works with Ray, a middle-aged lech who always hits on Rachel when she visits the garage.
Back in the present, Rachel’s eyes have an odd glow about them and she has a rope burn around her neck. She cleans herself up and goes off to find Jet. There is a “cliffhanger,” but the issue ends rather abruptly.
I didn’t read Moore’s first series (the seminal Strangers in Paradise) until it was finished and collected, and I discovered over the course of his second series (the lesser, but still great Echo) that his work reads better that way. Moore clearly structures his stories in such a way so that the end of one issue and the beginning of the next will be indiscernible when the story is collected. This makes for a somewhat choppy reading experience in single issues, but I still prefer to read the work of a master cartoonist like Moore as soon as I can.
As a first issue, Rachel Rising #1 works better than Echo #1 did. I got a sense of the major characters (despite the brief time we spend with them), and the set-up was intriguing. Don’t go in expecting it to blow you away right off the bat. Moore specializes in sneaking up on you, so that by issue nine or ten, you’ll be hooked without even realizing it.
