Written by Matt Kindt, Keanu Reeves
Art by Ron Garney
Published by BOOM! Studios
In this third issue, the story now begins to fill in more themes for our supernatural, unkillable warrior written by and looking like Keanu Reeves.
We see more windows into his past, in his first life with his valley tribe, long before he went by the name Berserker. In just two years since he was born, Beserker had grown to manhood. And that manhood was bloody, very bloody.
The comic book’s first two pages opens on various battlefields, all vistas of men ripped apart and horses downed.
All with one thing in common: Berserker cutting through them all. A man so strong men’s entire torsos explode at one blow. A man so powerful he grips someone by the throat, and squeezes their head clean off.
A man, I said. But is he a man? He’s in the shape of one. But is he one?
These flashbacks, told by Berserker’s research scientist, bring us to themes of nature and nurture. And, similar to Reeves’ Neo character in the Matrix films, a conflict of god and man in one being.
Berserker goes on these battles and raids with his father, who praises his son’s awesome battlefield power for keeping his village safe. Even if it appears the fighting keeps going and going, and it feels more like conquest of neighboring tribes and areas than simple self-defense.
But who is this dog of war?
In this life, the village calls him “Unute” (no idea how they’re pronouncing it, but I go with oo-noo-tay) a word that means tool and weapon. Those are things. Not men.
We only see the fighting, the blood and gore and entrails that cover Berserker. Does he laugh, sing, dance? Those human things?
In quiet moments with his mother, Unute questions his existence. Not simply the fighting and killing, but whether he’s anything more than a warrior, and whether his parentage is human at all.
If a god did appear as lightning and impregnated his mother, what god? Is it a benevolent god who gifted the village a protector, or a malevolent god with an unslakable thirst for blood and human misery?
He wants to break free of the killing, yet his father keeps conditioning him to see all outside the village as a threat to his people’s safety. And when the bloodlust is upon him, his eyes glow with power.
The intensity you expect with this title continues, while the government forces attempting to understand Berserker or exploit him as another Unute continue to circle.
