Warning: BRZRKR: Poetry of Madness is a MATURE comic

In a dark fantasy dream match, Keanu Reeves casts himself as a sword-and-sorcery-style demigod for BRZRKR: Poetry of Madness, featuring the return of the impassive, immortal warrior B. in all his glory. If that premise doesn’t already sound like gold on paper, it gets better: the team of Reeves, co-writer and artist Steve Skorce, and colorist Dave Stewart deliver on this score, throwing Reeves’ self-based hero into a truly magical adventure yarn in the vein of Conan and Heavy Metal Magazine, and the result is appropriately awesome.

Poetry of Madness serves as a peek into the historical wanderings of the 80,000 year-old B., placing the ancient warrior as a protector of the mythical and ill-fated kingdom of Atlantis. Reeves and Skorce knit a pulse-pounding set piece of monster-killing action in the tale of Atlantis' inevitable fall, as B. — then known by his original name Unute — fights through the last days of the decadent city of wonder against an unexpected threat: a cult attempting to contact the eldritch god Cthulu. And it’s not difficult to guess what ends up happening.

Keanu Reeves Delivers the Fantasy Fans Want — With a Twist

Though it is a relatively simple story, Reeves and Skorce produce a visually-fantastic and thematically-relevant fantasy comic by virtue not of their overt subversion of classic fantasy tropes, but by their adherence to these concepts in demonstrating their inherent flaws. While B.’s Atlantis may be doomed, and its culture’s hedonistic ways of life ultimately to blame in a classic Sodom & Gomorrah-type parable, B. does indeed still represent a strangely positive take on a stock character type. He may be an indomitable, hypermasculine warrior, but he is a deeply flawed one. Though he fails to save Atlantis from its grisly fate due to his own short-sightedness, B. embodies the complexity of a certain flawed, brooding antiheroic ideal that remains prevalent in action/adventure stories at large.

How BRZRKR Subverts Classic Fantasy

BRZRKR: Poetry of Madness presents an interesting dichotomy through its main character: though B. is a violent savior of Atlantis' people, slaughtering any enemy that threatens them, he is also exploiting their love of violence by acting as their undefeatable demigod. If he truly possessed the kind of heroic soul needed to save Atlantis from its own decadence, he wouldn't simply indulge the people's sense of entitlement and supposed supremacy among nations. Perhaps then he might have avoided their fate at the hands of the eldritch god. B. is not meant to be seen as a true unadulterated hero of humanity: he is simply a flawed human being like any other.

But if this criticism of the classic masculine hero is the point, then Reeves and Skorce do a superb job in reconstructing this particular type of character in full complexity, even while evoking the flaws of his archetype, which include uncontrollable rage and lust for battle. B. is not an evil man, and his devotion to Atlantis is certainly superhuman — but he is depicted as a man who does not necessarily consider the longterm effects of his actions. Though Skorce turns in a raucous and amazingly vibrant spin on the old-school fantasy comic feel, the sense of regret even amid the tumultuous, over-the-top scenes of gory battle remains palpable. It is this sense of regret that ultimately captures the spirit of Keanu Reeves’ B., even in his pyrrhic triumph, and points to his role as the possible villain.

BRZRKR: Poetry of Madness is on sale now from Boom! Studios.