Created By: Robert Kurtzman
Story By: Robert Kurtzman and John Bisson
Script By: John Bisson
Art By: Jason Jensen
Letters By: Brain J. Crowley
The Scream Factory
Serving as a prelude to Robert Kurtzman’s film, The Rage, Beneath the Valley of Rage allows us to see further into the sick mind of Dr. Vasilienko and the creation of his Rage Virus. It offers a fresh perspective on the existence of a man as heinous as Vasilienko and the situations he could have experienced that would turn him into the hateful and vengeful man he is today.
After watching her husband suffer the grizzly death of expelled insides as caused by the Rage Virus, Agent Sadko is left alone to interrogate the mad doctor responsible for it’s creation, Dr. Vasilienko.
His tale begins, like many before him, with the death of his parents. Having watched them both suffer the fate of terminal cancer Vasilienko, at a very young age, confirmed his life goal of curing cancer. He soon became the youngest graduate in history at his university and quickly found a position that allowed him to successfully find the cure. However, he is soon after imprisoned in an insane asylum for a false insanity claim by his bosses, allowing them to gain credit and profit for his discovery.
After a notice of lobotomy, Vasilienko makes his escape from the asylum in hopes of survival and murders anyone who gets in his way. The death count follows him into Guatemala where he is being chased by two frantic police. He makes his final escape through an oddities museum that sports many strange people including a Fat Lady, Mice eaters, and deformed fetuses. Before he leaves, the grounds keeper of the museum offers Vasilienko one last ghastly site at a discounted price. Being a geneticist, he couldn’t pass up the deal and soon comes face-to-face with a man who would forever change his life, Misfit.
Vasilienko and Misfit begin to chat when one of the police men interrupts. His partner has been blown up when he entered Vasilienko’s apartment and this cops fate would be no different, other than the fact it was Misfit who shoved a knife in his back. The dying cop then squeezes his trigger in his final hope of redemption missing Misfit and instead killing the museum owner – leaving Misfit and Vasilienko to escape unharmed and collide into one massive hate-on for the world.
I really enjoyed the writing in this issue and it is obvious that Kurtzman played a major role in it’s development. The high amount of insanity and bloodshed presented in Beneath the Valley of Rage greatly reflects that of the film and has become one of Kurtzman’s greatest M.O’s – solid horror. The story flows well from panel to panel and clearly develops Vasilienko’s disgust for mankind during each stage of his life. And if you aren’t careful, you soon begin to take pity on the man and find yourself in agreeance to his war on humanity.
The art is grotesque and endearing and I quickly found myself inspired to flip through the pages before I had even read them in order to see what excitement I would find in future panels. With the amount of detail presented through illustration it could nearly tell the tale alone and would leave only characters nameless as it’s downfall. Jensen clearly understands the story being told and plays off the plot perfectly, even developing Vasilienko’s nature facial expression from that of optimism in his younger years to that of the blind hatred he houses in his adult life.
Beneath of Valley of Rage #1 does great justice to the feature film it precedes but does not require the knowledge of the film to be understood which is a rare thing in comic book / film tie-ins. I was very impressed with Bisson’s writing and even more so by Jensen’s artwork. This is a series I will definitely revisit and one I recommend to all Kurtzman and horror fans alike. This is how you do gore based comics right – take note.
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- “RASL” Issues 1 – 11 by Jeff Smith (comicsforge.com)
