Bitter Root vol. 2: Rage & Redemption

The fight against the Jinoo rages on for the Sangeryes family in this volume.  It picks up with the “Red Summer Special” to fill in some backstory regarding its cast, with the bits regarding youngest son Cullen being the most relevant to the main story.  We saw him dragged off to the realm of the Barzkah in the first volume, only to return at its end.  It turns out that he was fighting there alongside his lost father and aunt for years, and all that combat made him angry… or something worse.  Meanwhile, the Sangeryes family is figuring out how to deal with this new breed of Jinoo that has descended upon Harlem and if they can be changed back or if there really is no cure.  Then there’s the problem of Adro, the being that feeds on others’ pain, that crossed over from the Barzkah.  Its presence causes the family to split its forces as Cullen, Berg, Ford, Nora, and token white guy Jimmy-Ray head down south to track it down.

I mentioned in my review of the first volume of “Bitter Root” that it came off like a series that was racing to tell its very last story first.  That hasn’t changed here as co-writers David Walker and Chuck Brown, along with artist Sanford Greene keep the story charging ahead at a breakneck pace, throwing action, history and tragedy at the reader over every page.  While this gives Greene plenty of chances to show his amazing range and style as an artist, the writing isn’t on the same level.  Walker and Brown continue to push the monsters-as-metaphor-for-racism metaphor that’s at the heart of the series, yet it feels like they’re doing so at the expense of everything else.  I still don’t feel like I know the Sangeryes clan all that well beyond each character’s defining personality and it’s really hard to get invested in the overall story as a result.  While I know this series does have its fans, it remains something I just can’t get into.