Nearly three years into my indie comic journey, approximately 150 different backings, and Rise Again Comics’ Monster M.D. is STILL my favorite book. It had everything– great art, story, colors, humor and action. It had a powerhouse team pairing writer Von Klaus and artist Monika Maccagni and brought to life the story of a monster doctor and his invisible assistant and their hijinks as they got into trouble while trying to cure monsters. It was crazy fun. When it got into the hands of backers during the second quarter of 2021, it quickly became a crowd favorite and amassed over 100k in crowdfunding money. (You can check out The Splintering’s review of Monster M.D. here)

More than 2 years after fulfilling Monster M.D., the creative team at Rise Again Comics bringsTerror in the Trenches to the masses. Needless to say, I looked forward to this book. It had the same ‘dream team’ of Klaus and Maccagni, as well as Tiago Barsa on colors and Eric Weathers on letters. This story is a reimagining of the Black Terror, a public domain superhero character (originally published by Nedor Comics in 1941). Rise Again Comics’ version takes place roughly 30 years after one Dr. Robert Benton (psst! aka The Black Terror) retires from his World War II-era escapades in the military and how his quiet life was blasted away, literally. Because of this, he needs to go back to the old version of himself (a very scary badass) to seek answers… and revenge, naturally.

As I expected, the art was amazing. TitT is one gorgeous book – even the cover treatments (foil, soft-touch and spot gloss) made a great first impression. The energy of the art and the often-dark grittiness of the colors helped to weave the tale of terror in both the past and present. Great imagery. There is one scene, a full-pager, that shows Lady Satan getting into the mind of one of the enhanced Nazi soldiers. They are in the foreground, the soldier kneeling on the ground, Lady Satan hovering over him as a glowing silhouette. This image overlays yet another, a gray-scaled moment from the soldier’s recent past. While it is a ghastly image, the combination of the two moments into one splash page is masterful. While the book has a lot of violence in it, the art style gives it more of a lighthearted feel, which I loved. It made the action fun and not overly off-putting.

But that is where my aweness (it’s in the Urban Dictionary- look it up) stopped. I didn’t feel as though the story of TitT flowed very well. I think there were too many jumps in time back and forth into the past, which interrupted the progression of the overall story. It felt like more time was spent showing his past as a wartime killing machine than to lay out the current events affecting the here and now, and I would have preferred more of the latter. I can only assume that this was done to push the point of his “terrorizing” past and to possibly show more badass art and action sequences. Either way, story wise, it didn’t work for me. By the time I had seen them all, the flashbacks seemed redundant.

Klaus was still very creative with the way he scripted things for the page turns- high marks for that. One beautiful pinup page has a single text box that reads, “A time when killing”; and after the page turn… ”… was all I knew” coupled with yet another stunning full-pager. There were a lot of splash pages like this inserted throughout, and it was a solid way to spotlight the art.

The way the story TitT ends, or lack thereof, is becoming one of my most common gripes, especially with crowdfunding. There is no ending in TitT, not even a satisfactory episodic conclusion. It’s more like a series finale designed to entice you to wait over the summer months to figure out if the main characters will survive. The difference with crowdfunding is that you could be waiting years. Anticipation does have a half-life. Before the premiere (issue 2), I would need to revisit the events that previously happened to refresh my memory. Although I have to admit, while waiting, I sometimes have forgotten about the titles (sorry, Netflix). To turn the knife even more with TitT, the ending was a brutal tease! I expected several additional pages of the story, (it really should have lasted longer), but instead, these pages were full of back matter, mostly pinup art. Cool and all, but… the story?! I even went back to see if I had missed some pages stuck together.

The lack of flow, the time spent in redundant flashbacks, and no closure on any level, made it seem as though not much happened in the story. I’m sure there will be a conclusion, Von Klaus has stated that Terror in the Trenches is slated to be a trilogy. Am I in for the rest? I’m not sure, I guess we will see if my disappointment also has a half-life. I was hoping that the story would sing to me from the heavens. It didn’t have the humor, nor the heart (unless you count a literal one ripped from a chest) that Monster M.D. did.

Was I spoiled by Monster M.D.’s completeness and page count and graphic novel? Is Terror in the Trenches an even bigger disappointment to me because of how high I hold Monster M.D.? What do you think? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.

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