Ragman: Suit of Souls #1

What an interesting one-shot. Ragman is an intriguing character, and one who rarely has much time in the spotlight. I loved him in the recent Shadowpact series, and Christos Gage is one of my favorite writers, so I knew I wantd to pick this up. I don't mind dropping $3.99 on promising one-shots.

Gage takes an interesting approach for this, half the books is Ragman telling a rabbi of the history of his heroic identity. I'm fascinated by religious super-heroes, and since Rory was originally not religious, but became so, he's got a fascinating and unique background. While that type of person is common in the real world, I don't think I've seen many of them in comics (maybe Firebird in the old West Coast Avengers days).
The other half of the book involves Rory coming to terms with his father, the previous Ragman's actions during WWII. Rory's Dad fled Germany when things went terribly bad, and he always held it against his Dad that he didn't lay down his life for his fellow Jews. In a neat bit of exposition from an unlikely source, we find out that maybe Rory's Dad didn't have as much choice in the matter as he thought. It's a brilliant scene involving the last person I could imagine to be defending a Jewish super-hero.

The art by Stephen Segovia is subdued, but it fits the material. This is not a hyper-action super-hero slugfest, this is a fairly dark character study, and the art sells it.

Good