Falling in Love and Saving the Universe in Ram V and Anand RK’s Resurrection Man: Quantum Karma

In the Ram V-written Resurrection Man: Quantum Karma, Anand RK (artist) and Mike Spicer (colorist) create a dream-like atmosphere.  Anand’s artwork can be full of detail, very descriptive, and well-defined.  And then at other points, it’s more vague, outlines and impressions of Mitch Shelley’s life.  Reading this book is like reading someone’s memories; some of those memories are indelibly locked in while others flit in and out, half there and half gone.  And that only makes sense when reading a book about an immortal, doomed to be resurrected every time he dies.  Spicer’s colors walk the same pathways, not nearly as saturated into the page as we’re used to seeing from his coloring elsewhere but almost more suggestions of times, places, and feelings than trying to capture any realism in the moment.  

Under the pens and brushes of other artists, this story could read as standard end-of-the-world-superheroing.  Original 1990’s-era Resurrection Man artist, the late and great Jackson Guice (and Guice stand-in Mike Perkins after Guice’s passing) gives us a glimpse of that version of this story on a page at the beginning of each chapter.  Each chapter opens with a Guice/Perkins drawn page reflecting what the story would look like in a more mainstream superhero world, including a shot of the 90’s era Justice League with electric-blue Superman.  Ram V doesn’t include these to point at them or anything.  By bringing Guice back to the character, these pages provide another perspective for this story.  Maybe Ram is trying to play the story you expect against the story he’s writing for you but these pages give a glimpse of another version of this story, maybe a bit more conventional version of the story but no less complex or demanding of a version of the story but a more base version of the story that’s not so driven by emotion but by superheroic action.

The driving force behind Resurrection Man: Quantum Karma is feelings and motivations that we don’t usually see have this much hold on the story as they do here.  There’s usually not room for those kinds of things in monthly superhero comics but that’s what Ram V does— he finds different paths into his stories that don’t align neatly with the paths we know.  This story opens on a family saying goodbye to their dying father and husband. The old man lies in a hospital bed— his spirit strong but his body at the end of its line and not able to hold on much longer.  A wife, a daughter, and a granddaughter, already in the stages of grief, try to figure out how they will go on once Mathieu Salierre lets go of his mortal body. The story opens in death and grief but it also opens in love and these are the elements that Ram V and Anand RK keep coming back to in this story.  

Let’s be clear— in many ways, this is your fairly standard end-of-everything story as a threat from Mitch Shelley’s past tracks him down at the ends of creation, looking to devour everything and Shelley (the resurrected Salierre) is the only person who can defeat the threat and save everything.  If you were asked to describe this story, that may be the most straightforward and non-nuanced way to try to explain what happens here.  There are other details to add (an older, more single-minded, and ruthless Resurrection Man from another universe now called Shesha tries to guide the Shelley of this universe on this mission) and time travel elements that you could then dive into.  But that’s ignoring the death, grief, and love that open and hang over the story.  That’s the plot of this tale but it’s not the story that these creators are invested in. 

While this is a revival of a 90s series, the book feels more related to Ram V’s Boom Studios work The Many Deaths of Laila Starring and Rare Flavours, meditative stories about (you guessed it,) love, death, and grief.  Like those stories, Ram V finds this balance of the grand and the intimate.  Beyond the end-of-everything histrionics of this story, Mitch Shelley is a man whose gift and curse is to always be resurrected— that’s different than immortality.  His power isn’t to live forever— he has to die over and over again for his powers to express themselves.  The method of his death influences the power he has in his resurrection.  But he has to die first and die continually to be resurrected.

That’s the beginning point of Shelley’s story- death.  What could it mean to him when he dies?  What does it mean to him when those he gets close to die?  Early on in the story, Shelley asks, “You think saving the universe and falling in love are the same thing?”  “You’d be surprised,” Shesha answers.  And there is Ram and Anand’s story.  Having died of old age, of time, Shelley’s resurrected power isn’t over time and memory as he looks back over his life, his times of falling in and losing love, of saving the world from petty, earthly threats even as he nudges his memories and events to prepare for the upcoming battles.  And it’s not preparing the likes of Batman or Superman for this battle— it’s preparing the answer to his question if falling in love and saving the universe are the same thing.  

Imagine if that question were asked more in comics- if each crisis or alternate universe was saved by emotions & love rather than mostly punching.  This is still that kind of story but the struggle is far more internal— Shelley versus Shesha.  The man he is versus the man he will be.  Yes, there is another, imminent threat out there that threatens to devour reality but Ram and Anand’s story shows a man trying to hold onto the love that makes him who he is— all of the highs and lows that come from allowing yourself to love.