Review: R.I.P.D.: City of the Damned TPB

As you might remember from my review of the first R.I.P.D. trade, the Rest in Peace Department is God’s police force, helping to expunge demons and other dark forces that just won’t stay in hell where they belong. In that trade, our protagonist Nick Cruz teamed up with Roy Pulsipher to find out who killed him. The comic wasn’t all that original in its presentation, but it made up for that lack of originality with strong characters and a hell of a lot of fun. R.I.P.D.: City of the Damned, however, was written just this year, thirteen years after the original series, with none of the writers or artists coming back to work on it. Reviving the series without any of the main creators doesn’t make a lot of sense…until you remember there’s a movie based on the series coming out in July. Yep, it’s a cash-in. So let’s look at what they’ve done and get this over with.

The first series was written and created by Peter Lenkov, and it appeared by all rights to be a self-contained story. At the very least, there was little chance of Roy coming back, since that mission was his last; he’d hit his hundred years of service required to move onto the afterlife, so his adventures in the R.I.P.D. should be over. But I guess someone looked at the original series and decided Roy was the far superior character (he was), so new writer Jeremy Barlow had to come up with a reason to make the series about him.

So, instead of progressing the story, we get a flashback, ensuring that no tension is had throughout the book since we know Roy survives in the end anyway. Oof. Not a great start. Especially when it means the back of the trade explicitly lies to you, as Nick Cruz…wait, apparently it’s Nick Walker now, in a bizarre retcon that lazily gets rid of any racial traits the original character had so that Ryan Reynolds could be cast as the lead. UGH. Thanks for ensuring the hispanic and Latin American communities who would so desperately love to finally have a leading man in a movie like this won’t get the chance, Hollywood. Anyway, he’s in about ten pages of the four issue collection despite being mentioned multiple times on the back cover. Gotta love false advertising.

Before I go into the multiple problems with this book, I should point out that the art is not one of them. Tony Parker (no, not that Tony Parker, this Tony Parker) and Michelle Madsen (best known for her work in the Buffyverse) are more that capable of picking up where original artists Lucas Mrangon and Randy Emberlin left off. The art is definitely different than the original, going for something more realistic than cartoony, but the change is not necessarily for the worse. Also, the design for the villain is absolutely incredible. It’s not necessarily all that original, but it’s sinister in all the right ways, and it deserves to be in a better comic.

If a story is going to take away from the action by setting it in a flashback until the very end, then it has to be a piece that opens one’s eyes to the character, helping us learn who he really is and why he behaves the way he does. It has to be well told and well executed through and through, really working as an exploration of the themes of the original more than anything else. So, one must ask: what do we learn about Roy Pulsipher, the R.I.P.D., or any of the relevant characters in the series? Why, absolutely nothing! There’s no character development or deep symbolism or thematic exploration; instead, it’s just one big action set piece after the next. You don’t even really get to rest to take in what just happened, since the series had to be finished before the movie came out and they could only fit in four issues if they wanted this on shelves in time. And the side characters are so forgettable that I’ve read this trade twice and still can’t remember anyone’s name.

Image taken from http://www.darkhorse.com

Worst of all, at the very end, we finally break out of flashback and have a chance to see events that can truly change the course of the R.I.P.D. universe. The weight of this encounter has been building throughout the entire series. Supposedly everything that happened, the entire bland ride from action scene to action scene, was meant to set up tension for this exact encounter. And right when you finally think that perhaps they’ve really been building up to something this entire time, it just ends. Seriously. They spend almost ninety pages building up to this scene, only to end it in less than ten panels. I didn’t even know you could kill dramatic tension that quickly. It’s clear that the series was badly rushed at this point, so I understand they had to wrap everything up, but when the plot of the flashback is so dumb that even the writer points out how silly this all is, I can’t help but feel like the ending deserved more respect than it got.

R.I.P.D.: City of the Damned will not be seen as anyone on this creative team’s finest hour. Then again, being forced to work with a universe you didn’t create and have no ties to that also fits the image some Hollywood company wants to create for their movie adaptation all while on a strict deadline could not have been fun. I’m going to give the creative team all of the benefit of the doubt and assume the bureaucracy behind this sunk the project before it could even launch. Still, if it isn’t obvious, this is $14.99 you should spend elsewhere.

Chase Wassenar, aka MaristPlayBoy, is the Lead Editor and Founder of the Red Shirt Crew. He’s hoping beyond hope the movie will be enjoyable, but this is most assuredly not a good sign. You can read his other articles at ToyTMA, follow him on Twitter at @RedShirtCrew or email him at theredshirtcrew@gmail.com.