Writer: Shannon Eric Denton (co-created with Keith Griffen)
Artist: Matt Jacobs
Publisher: Image Comics/Desperado
I really, really wanted to like this book a lot more than I did. It has some great ideas but is just handled rather poorly, in my opinion. Tabula Rasa is a standard "Crow-like" revenge tale with a south Florida based police officer who's been murdered and comes back from the dead as a golem (think animated being housing the spirit of a dead guy) created by a rabbi. In addition, this avenging golem only has a certain amount of time to wreak his terrible vengeance on the person (or persons) responsible for his violent and untimely demise.
However, as much as I enjoy revenge tales and unstoppable killing machines looking for justice or whatever, I had a hard time enjoying Tabula Rasa. The golem angle is a nice touch, and it's something we rarely see in supernatural vendetta stories these days, and the book works… but just barely. It's mostly a paint by numbers routine, treading very familiar ground of the wronged dead man coming back to kill those who killed him. There's very little to make us worried over the main character because he appears to be completely indestructible, except for that whole time-limit thing (which, if I may sound utterly jaded, reminds me of a common video-game ploy).
In addition to a factory-pressed plot that's rather thin, the art is nothing to crow about. Wait. Did I just say "crow about"? Jesus. Sorry. Anyhow, yeah, the art isn't that great. It's not awful. Just not great. The illustrations remind me of a lot of indie work from the late 80s/early 90s: black and white and not all that memorable. I don't feel it detracts TOO much from the overall product, but I felt it could have been better. Matt Jacobs is obviously trying to keep it dark and moody, and his violent bits work well… Well, I shouldn't be too hard on it. The pencils work fine. It just has that sketchy look to it that I don't care for much, personally. I have to say though that the inking of said pencils is well done.
As far as the writing itself goes, it could be better. Like the art, it isn't "bad." Just not all that awesome (or even very good in a memorable sorta way), either. What really didn't impress me was the overall plot. I mentioned before that some of the ideas were great but these were poorly executed. Let me explain.
See, Tabula Rasa compresses probably 6 issues worth of story into 44 pages. This compression shows, and the book suffers for it. It's too bad because I really would have liked to have seen some character development (which is lacking, but I don't hold it against Denton). Along with the lack of good character development, the story just steams forward at a jumpy pace. It probably wouldn't have been so irritating if the main characters (the Golem Cop and the Rabbi) hadn't been travelling so much (in order to get to those who had the cop killed). I wonder if this story was originally planned for multiple issues. The different sections of the story end up seeming more like gloss-overs or Cliff Notes in the end.
The dialogue was okay, which is always nice. There were parts where it was cheesy, yeah, but it could have been much worse. Some elements of the story seemed to play on stereotypes, like the part concerning the Klansmen, but I can overlook that because one thing this book has is a nice dose of good old fashioned gallows humour.
Still, there's nothing in the writing that stands out, really. It does the job. And that's my big problem here. It could have been so much better, but instead it just does the job.
I suppose I sound like I'm tearing this comic apart, and I suppose I am a bit. This doesn't mean I hate Tabula Rasa. Along with the dark humour, there's Rabbi Shaffel, who's a great character (he gets a little development through dialogue), and at least it all gets to the point rather quickly and efficiently. The final page appears to offer the possibility of more with this story and background coming out in the future. I, for one, am curious to see how the cop-turned-golem and the rabbi develop over extended story-arcs.
It's just too bad it got off to such a lacklustre start if this is indeed "the beginning".
What did you think of this book?
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