BRZRKR #5
Unute speaks about love in BRZRKR #5, by writers Keanu Reeves and Matt Kindt, artist Ron Garney, colorist Bill Crabtree, and letterer Clem Robins. This issue is mostly quiet and bittersweet in comparison to the blood baths of previous issues, and it’s quite effective.
The doctor comes to Unute’s house, and they have drinks, talk about music. The next day, she connects him to machines, and they discuss his love life and the hollowness of love for an immortal being. The reminiscence brings him pain, and energy explodes outward from him, destroying the machines. Later, on his way to the next mission, he’s more melancholy than ever. Meanwhile, a mysterious man asks the doctor if they got the readings, and she answers that she did.
Unute’s immortality has had a deleterious effect on his love life, to say the least. That’s pretty much the crux of the issue, as Reeves and Kindt lay out his life of love and pain. Every one of his affairs ends in the same way. Either he is killed in some gruesome fashion, or he outlives them. He describes it much like his berserker rages, in that the desire for love builds up more and more until he must act on it. The irony, of course, is that this is actually pretty normal for most human beings, just without the terrible deaths or watching them grow old and die.
It’s probably one of the most normal things about Unute that readers have been given so far. There’s a moment where it seems like he and the doctor are going to get together, but it doesn’t happen; the urge apparently hasn’t built up yet. The really interesting plot point, though, is the way the reminiscing affects him. Readers have seen the blue energy build-ups with him before but never like this, and it plays directly into the last page. Reeves and Kindt have established the government wants to make more like him, and the last page with the doctor saying she got the energy readings is ominous, to say the least. Is this what they’ve been looking for? It’s a wonderful ending.
Garney’s art does a remarkable job of capturing the pain and melancholy of Unute in every panel. There’s one scene of tenderness in the book when the doctor is connecting Unute to the machine. It’s just a few panels, but it says it all about the moment. It’s just as intimate as a sex scene, and Garney nails it a tender moment before the coming cavalcade of pain.
BRZRKR #5 does a lot with a little. Imagining Unute as unlucky in love makes as much sense as anything, but Reeves and Kindt capture it in a quietly devastating way. Garney’s expert pencils bring every bit of pain to life. BRZRKR #5 eschews the gore and violence of previous issues to quietly devastate the reader.
