Ruins of Ravencroft

Ruins of Ravencroft #1-3

by Frank Tieri, Guiu Vilanova (Illustrator)

The history of the Ravencroft Institute for the Criminally Insane has been shrouded in mystery for years. NO LONGER! In the wake of ABSOLUTE CARNAGE, the facility's past has started to unravel, and in doing so has revealed hidden chapters in the lives of some of the Marvel Universe's most recognizable heroes and villains! Efforts to reconstruct RAVENCROFT are well underway... COLLECTING: RUINS OF RAVENCROFT: CARNAGE (2020) 1, RUINS OF RAVENCROFT: DRACULA (2020) 1, RUINS OF RAVENCROFT: SABRETOOTH (2020) 1

Genres: Comics, Marvel, Spider Man, Graphic Novels, Superheroes

112 pages, Paperback

Published July 21, 2020

Reviews

[Paul]

I'll be honest, when I saw that this collected three one-shots, all of which were a kind of epilogue to the recent 'Absolute Carnage' event and a prequel to the upcoming 'Ravencroft' series, I was expecting it to be absolute garbage. Hush my mouth! Frank Tieri and co. have actually pulled off a decent horror story here. The artwork is of a high standard and the whole thing forms a cohesive whole that I really enjoyed. I'm actually looking forward to the ongoing 'Ravencroft' book now, if it's going to be as good as this.

A shame about the godawful cover art, really...

[Tiag⊗ the Mutant]

Forget Arkham Asylum, Marvel is going full horror mode with Ravencroft, with all the classic monsters, got a B.P.R.D. feeling out of this, I hope this carries on after the arrival of Knull.

[James]

3.25 stars. So here we get the back story on the Ravencroft institution. It starts back in the 1400s showing how the land where it would one day be built, was cursed. We see how bad things have always happens there throughout time. That part of this book was kinda creepy. As we move up through time we see the facility finally get built and see all the horrible experiments that went on there. Nothing to get too excited about but it was decent.

[RG]

Surprised how much I liked this

[Guilherme Smee]

Caras e caretas que me leem. Eu sabia que Ravencroft tinha potencial, mas transformar Frank Tieri de um escritor ruim para mediano ou bom é um feito considerável. Ruínas de Ravencroft, que foi publicado no Brasil em um encadernado só com a minissérie Ravencroft, traz a história da reconstrução do Asilo Arkham da Marvel. A seção Ruínas do encadernado brasileiro, por exemplo, foca no passado do instituto para criminosos insanos. Desde sua fundação no tempo dos peregrinos, em que um antecessor de Cletus Casady assassina dezenas de pessoas em nome de Knull, passando para o primeiro encontro entre o Senhor Sinistro e o Dentes de Sabre e, por fim, um combate de Capitão América e Bucky contra um antigo aliado. As três HQs dão a fundação para a minissérie que segue, Ravencroft, mostrando os esforços do Coronel Jonah Jameson para reconstruir aquele maldito e horroroso local que tem a intenção de recuperar criminosos.

[Dimitris Papastergiou]

Great artwork. Boring Story. (at least for me)

[Cesse]

Ett billigt litet fynd som jag gjorde när jag handlade några titlar från SF-Bokhandelns årliga bokrea. Den här serien föregås av ett album kallat "Absolute Carnage" och det efterföljs av ett kallat för "Ravencroft", jag har förvisso inte läst några av dom men kan tänka mig att göra det ljusskyggt. Den här historien är något spretig måste jag säga. Dels i att den inte är så där vansinnigt snyggt tecknad, men den biten ligger ju helt klart i betraktarens ögon att avgöra, men den är om möjligt ännu mera spretig i handlingen. Den består av 3 delar, en kretsar kring karaktären Carnage (som jag vanligtvis gillar skarpt, dock inte i denna tolkning), den andra kring karaktären Sabretooth (som jag också normalt sätt gillar, men inte heller den är speciellt intressant i denna tolkning) och slutligen en som kretsar kring Dracula. För det första så hade jag inte ens en aning om att Marvel hade gjort Dracula till en karaktär men så är fallet, klart och tydligt när jag gör en del eftersökningar, men det är också den klart bättre av berättelserna. Allt vävs sedan samman av en rätt klen ramberättelse. Men på det hela taget, klart värt dom 59 kronor som jag betalade för albumet. Så ofta köper jag inte direkt seriealbum längre, speciellt inte amerikanska.

[Chris Lemmerman]

Serving as both a prequel and a sequel to Absolute Carnage, Ruins Of Ravencroft unpacks the horrible history of Marvel's mental asylum. How do the Cult Of Knull, Sabretooth, and even Dracula himself feed into the construction of this awful building? And what will the secrets of the Ruins of Ravencroft mean for the future of the asylum?

I love stories like this. Frank Tieri turns up the melodrama to 11, throws all the craziest inner monologues possible at the wall, and then grabs all the bits that didn't stick and slams them in as well. It's so over the top and daft, but I love it. Only a truly bonkers story could tie together all these characters, and it's oddly satisfying to follow the rise and fall of Ravencroft through the ages.

Each issue has a framing sequence by Angel Unzueta, which feeds into the main Ravencroft series, while Carnage is penciled by Guiu Vilanova, Sabretooth is handled by Francesco Manna, and Stefano Landini gets Dracula. None of them are Marvel's top names, but this isn't meant to be a top tier project, and the four of them do a bang up job of setting the creepy, claustrophobic mood inside Ravencroft.

Ruins Of Ravencroft has no airs about it - it's a daft story, but it revels in its daftness. It somehow manages to go so far over the top that it becomes enjoyable again, and I love it for that.

[XMCU]

I wanted to get this book with Ravencroft TP (2020), but I didn't have the money to get both at the same time. But also, I bought Ruins Of Ravencroft at half the price it was originally priced.

These two books need to be collected together. Hopefully the "third volume" will continue to be intriguing or end this series satisfactory.

Reading this book before Ravencroft TP (2020) is not necessary but it's better to read to do so. Why isn't this book named Ravencroft Vol. 1 and the other book Ravencroft Vol. 2? It's easier to comprehend. I'm going to rate this book 5 stars cause I like this series. If I wasn't rating this 5 stars, I'd rate this book 4 stars. I enjoyed this book. I knew there was only 3 issues. And they were good issues, but I wanted more stories of Ravencroft. This story takes place in present time and flashes back to the beginning of the Ravencroft Institute. The present storyline set ups pays off in Ravencroft TSp (2020). Again, these two books should be bundled together.

[Robert 'Rev. Bob']

This had some interesting ideas, but the Carnage issue was just hot garbage. Cletus Kasady's origin as a random psycho killer was fine as it was. Making him the descendant of Ravencroft's first-ever inmate, aka Literally The New World's First-Ever Mass Murderer, who became such due to the corrupting influence of a secret, legendary tribe of cannibal Native Americans who wore spirals on their foreheads and worshiped the Carnage symbiote before Europeans ever discovered America, let alone before the Carnage symbiote was even created... well, that's pushing things JUST A BIT too far to be at all credible.

[Crazed8J8]

2.5 stars rounded up.
Three books, so a very short read. Each has a unique story with an underlying tie-in. That said, neither the individual story nor the overall arch really does much to advance the plot. Short story shorter... Ravencroft is being rebuilt, it has a sordid history, and remains an Arkham rip-off.
Artwork was great, but all of the stories were very bland and unexciting. Not one character among them stuck out as interesting, and I'm fans of most of the characters featured herein...
NOT a recommended read.

[Quentin Wallace]

Anything with Carnage, Sabretooth, and Dracula is probably going to be interesting, this was.

I haven't read Absolute Carnage yet, but it didn't seem essential to this volume. I think there's a bit too much retconning going on here but overall this is good. Wolverine and Captain America put in appearances, as well as a few others.

Creepy and sets the scene for the upcoming Ravencroft series. A little different than most Marvel books lately, but in a good way.

[Craig]

This was an interesting book, with a rather strange collection of Marvel characters (Misty Knight, Mr. Fantastic, John Jameson, and the Kingpin(?)) all exploring the ruins of Ravencroft asylum, recently destroyed in the Absolute Carnage event. As they go, we're treated to flashbacks of the history of the place, which has involved everyone from Nathan Essex to Logan and Victor Creed. Even Dracula makes an appearance. The art is decent throughout.

[Jay]

Ruins of Ravencroft was just okay. I don't understand why they picked Sabretooth for one of the stories; it didn't make sense to me, and honestly.. some of the other character tie-ins didn't make sense either. I didn't mind the historical context (1400's setting) even though it was slightly corny at times. With that being said, they could have done a much better job keeping things coherent. The Dracula route had potential, but it also missed the mark.

The tie-ins with Carnage felt pointless in the second two issues. I don't know how we go from Carnage to Dracula and Man-Wolf. While going the horror route for Ravencroft could be fun, where is the payoff for the Carnage scenes? And again, Sabretooth just seemed completely random. The whole plot bounced around way too much and desperately needed more focus. It left a lot to be desired. You'd expect a story about Ravencroft to be much better than this... It just left me frustrated, wishing it had never been created, and someone else had a crack at a Ravencroft story.

[Stephen Adkison]

Pretty fun. Way more interested in the history stuff (and the art was better) than the present day. A lot of mysteries still, and unless they are more present in the next series, a lot of random characters show up and do nothing.

[Rosaria Battiloro]

3,5
this was pretty good actually! Basically a horror story (and I LOVE HORROR STORIES) with all the tropes of the genre: an old asylum (basically the very Marvel version of the DC's Arkham), a diary keeping terrible secrets, a story going back in time, monsters and vampires and superheroes!

[Alexandre]

Started pretty interesting but Dracula showed up and after that meh ...

[Chalupa Batman]

Ehh....lazy sorry telling about the creation of the Ravencroft Institute. Found the Carnage story pretty compelling but the other 2 stories (Dracula and Sabertooth) were just ehh...

[Nicole Westen]

Well, trust Marvel to find something worse than 'an old indian burial ground' to build an asylum for the super-powered criminally insane on. I am, however, glad to see Misty back.

[Lillian Francis]

Pretty good and creepy stuff. Don't know how that affects certain characters or how things fit in their timeline.