Rapture

Rapture #1-6

by Michael Avon Oeming, Taki Soma

After warring for a century, Earth's greatest champions and villains suddenly disappear, leaving the planet decimated. Like a rapture, the Powers are gone and humanity is left behind to pick up the pieces. Amongst this wreckage, two lovers, Evelyn and Gil, find themselves separated by a continent and will do anything to find each other again. But when a strange being named "The Word" turns Evelyn into a champion with an angelic spear, she finds the force of her love for Gil clashing with her newfound power. Love and destiny collide in what will become the worst breakup ever!

Genres: Comics, Graphic Novels

144 pages, Paperback

First published May 11, 2010

About the author

Michael Avon Oeming is an American comic book creator, both as an artist and writer.

His 1998 comic book Bulletproof Monk was made into a film of the same name.

The previous mentioned collaborations are The Mice Templar from Image Comics, which he draws and co-authors with Bryan J.L. Glass,[1] and Powers from Icon Comics which he draws, and sometimes co-authors, with Brian Bendis. His creator-owned projects include Rapture, on which he collaborated with his wife, Taki Soma,[2] and The Victories, both for Dark Horse Comics.

As of 2010, he is employed as a staff member of Valve Corporation, working on Left 4 Dead, Team Fortress 2 and Portal 2 webcomics.

Reviews

[Alyse]

R.I.P. used bookstore; so my very-close-to-home used bookstore was going out of business, at least the one where I enjoyed the quiet atmosphere and the selection of books where you'll never know what you might find. They had a sale, a super sale and I got a great deal but I thought I'd go out of my comfort zone and take a look at the actual comic books they had. I've read manga, a lot of manga but I understand this is a little different. I searched for a one volume type deal and happened upon this book. It was a slow to start read, I had trouble following the story. Maybe it was that it was my sort-of first comic book? Or it could have been the fact that the story pushed too much and didn't provide great starter flow. After the protagonist avenges people she knew; their deaths the story becomes a little more clearer. It's interesting. Heroes aren't exactly heroes they're CHAMPIONS (sounds more regal) and there's this big dispute either between themselves or the humans and them (see hard to follow). The art is okay, not knowing much about the art of comic books, perhaps my opinion is biased. The only things I would say it was clean, perfect color (although a little darker than I would have liked) and minimal detail. After you get the hang of the story you can't help but read more. It's an interesting take on superheroes. Where in Marvel they're protectors of the world humans live in and if they mess up everything goes to shit. I rate it 3 stars only because I had a hard time getting into the story or doing anything about it to prevent in the future.

[ThatBookGal]

Beautiful artwork, some of the panels were glorious. The storyline wasn’t too bad, but the dialogue and pacing was atrocious. It often didn’t make sense because it was trying to rush to catch up with itself. Wouldn’t recommend it.

[Fawndolyn Valentine]

A great story with gorgeous artwork! There was some miniscule subplot that had nothing to add to the story (the bits that weren't Gil and Evelyn), that I found so dull and unimportant that I skipped right iver them. The Adam & Eve bit was trite, but the whole thing tied together in a backhanded biblical sense anyway (Adam and Eve, Rapture, blood & body of Christ as cannibalism...).
Everything til the very end was good. Then mommy and daddy came home and completely restored order without an ounce of care for what just went down. Another biblical satire moment there, I guess.

By the looks of this review, you'd think I bated it, but it was pretty good and I absolutely loved the art.

[Alan]

Michael Avon Oeming decides to mash up the Bible's Raptrue story with modern day super-hero comics to present a post devasted Earth inhabited by a few humans and cannibals (not zombies for once-yay). In addition, we get an interesting take on love, relationships, power, and the abuse of power. While not a great read, and interesting one nonetheless.

[Shaun]

The art for this book is beatiful. But the rest of the book needs a lot of help. Dialogue banal and insipid. Plot points heavy-handed and arbitrary. Characters superficial and one-dimensional. It was a struggle to finish.

[Amber]

So dissapointed with this GN. Big let down.
But still love Oeming's art.

[Jeff]

A strange rapture story/superhero mashup. The art was nice, the story kind of disappointing. Not really sure what to make of it - abrupt start, abrupter end.

[Heine]

Interesting story with a good beginning. It has a weak ending, though, and no real explanations of what's going on.