Professor Alan is to blame for this one.  And yes, I mean blame … but in the nicest way possible.  Over the holidays, the man spent his well-earned quarters on a number of comic books for his friends and in the package I received was Raver #1 from Malibu Comics.  Published in 1993, it was written by Walter Koenig (Pavel Chekov from Star Trek) and drawn by Dan and David Day.  The cover says that it’s a “Collector’s Special” and a “First Fantastic Issue.”

I don’t know about that.

Raver is a guy who wears red spandex and a trench coat, kind of if you mixed Mon-El with Gambit.  He’s got gray hair.  And he’s got powers that … well, I actually could barely understand who is was and what he was doing throughout this entire comic.  I know that the villain of the book wants to get rid of war and sadness and that he and Raver keep jumping through what looks like different times or reality or perceptions of reality.  I get the sense that the villain is bullied in some way because there’s this motif of someone getting accused of something by everyone around him or her, and it takes a while for Raver to figure out what’s going on.  When he does, it’s a moment where they are both little kids and Raver decides to not fight the villain and offer his friendship.  That’s what does the trick.

I think?

Seriously.  I could not follow this book.  I didn’t have any context for the character or his situation (and it is a first issue so maybe nobody else did) and it seemed like the character was confused as I was throughout the entire story.  That might have been the point, too, but something to at least make us understand a little bit more about what we were looking at could have been helpful.

The art is actually pretty decent.  Dan and David Day give us some good action and monsters, they draw kids who look like kids instead of little adults, and it doesn’t reek of Nineties in the way that some of Malibu’s other comics (The Ferret) do.  But in the end?  It’s the thought that counts.

Keep, Sell, Donate, or Trash?

Trash.