Review by Ian Keogh
Mark Anthony Towers is a nasty type. He’s a rapist and murderer, yet narcissistic enough to believe his assaults and killings entitle him to a form of respect. When he’s captured the police believe they’ve caught the Red Canyon killer, but as the art shows, those murders were committed by a Predator. It’s loose in the city when it overhears a just released criminal talking about a killing contest taking place in jail, where those on death row have nothing left to lose.
Randy Stradley scripts Race War based on a plot from crime writer Andrew Vachss, and it features Cross, a mercenary from Vachss’ novels. Cross has his own activities going on, and detailing them requires text and illustration with the narrative captions taking the form of a police report. As Cross continues his work on the outside, Towers is jailed with a reputation so high he believes it will keep him safe. Also of interest are the team of government specialists with a keen interest in what’s happening in the jail now housing Towers.
The set up is deliberately muddied, with the clues as to the truth cleverly incorporated, but Race War’s nowhere near as good as it might be due to the use of artists who’re talented and can tell a story, but not in a way that holds the interest. Jordan Raskin draws the first half, and his Predator is great, as feral and threatening as it needs to be, but too much else is ordinary, although he’s not helped by a large word count to accommodate on most pages. The final two chapters from Lauchland Pelle display an artist more able to lay out interesting pages, but with weak anatomy and too many posed people with open mouths.
There’s little subtlety employed in Race War, and that certainly applies to the final third when the race elements are introduced. The terminology considered acceptable in the early 1990s would now be a no-go area even when spouted by racist characters, and what then might have been an eye-opening plot about factionalism in jails has since featured on too many TV shows. What kills the story, though, is Vachss having far greater interest in his own characters than the Predator, who could be replaced by another killer without changing much until the predictable carnage at the end.
It would seem the language is unpalatable in the 21st century, as Race War is absent from the otherwise chronological Omnibus reprints.
