The Keanu Reeves comic: violence, 'gore' and an immortal antihero

"I saw the image of a guy punching another guy through the chest and out the back, ripping off his arms... I don't know why, but it occurred to me."

And while he is telling it,

makes the gesture with his fist, as if his character, in the throes of madness, had pierced an enemy's chest in the middle of a Viking battle and ripped out his entrails.

It's not one of his movies.

It is part of the script of his comic, his first and brutal comic:

(pronounce Berserker, like the warriors who in Nordic legends fought possessed by fury in a kind of mystical-violent trance).

Keanu Reeves as a comic book author?

Yes, accompanied by the screenwriter

and the cartoonist

who have been in charge of capturing his idea.

And it has been a complete success in the United States: the publisher Boom!

it released 600,000 copies of the first issue in September 2021, ahead of the expected release of the new

.

The 12-volume staple comic is published monthly, and Netflix has already announced a movie (which will star Reeves himself) and an animated series.

arrives in Spain thanks to Planeta, which will also publish it in Mexico and South America.

«

a great success supported by the figure of Keanu Reeves, who had a media rebirth with the

from which this comic drinks a lot.

Its impact in Europe will be tremendous as soon as Netflix's live-action film is released," says David Hernando, editorial director of Planeta Cómic.

In a way,

concentrates some of Keanu Reeves' emblematic films, starting with the John Wick saga, a thriller that premiered in 2014 and is already in its third film - at least two others are missing, in addition to

various

. , with its corresponding adaptations to comics and video games.

If each new installment of

is more violent than the previous one, BRZRKR is an orgy of blood on paper, with great detail

(intestines, hanging eyes or the fist scene, of course).

One of the illustrations for 'BRZRKR'. PLANET

But in the brief first number, a plot with a certain philosophical background and the psychological tribulations that will torment B, the mysterious protagonist who is physically the same as Keanu Reeves, can also be guessed.

B is a cursed immortal, he is 80,000 years old and has made a deal with the United States Army, which employs him as a ruthless killing machine in exchange for restoring him to mortality.

But sometimes memories assail B, including his own birth during Prehistory (throughout the 12 issues there will be flashbacks to different times in the history of mankind).

Identification with Keanu Reeves is such that the comic begins with a nod to the 2010 photo that went viral and became the

the actor sitting on a bench, in a rueful attitude, while eating a

.

In the comic, the

has been replaced by a more aesthetic and dramatic rain.

More:

But here B does not have to choose between red and blue, because he takes a bicolor as part of his medication to recover mortality.

"It's a bit meta-referential," Reeves admitted in the American presentation of the comic.

And more winks will come in the next issues...

«The fact of differentiating reality from fiction (in terms of B's ​​memories and his story) can be a parallel with the Matrix.

The absolute violence that these pages exude is a mirror image of

.

And we could almost say that the non-stop action reminds us of

!” compares Hernando.

Yes, the rhythm of BRZRKR is pure adrenaline.

Because of its brutality, each page takes your breath away.

"When I drew the first issue, I got on a nice Ducati or something, and I haven't stopped since, because the speed kept increasing," admits Ron Garney, who had already drawn Spiderman, Daredevil or Captain America.

But this is his most violent comic, a bet by the new fashion editorial in the United States, Boom!, which has published well-known indie phenomena such as There is something killing children (it surpassed a million copies, something unheard of for a horror comic) or Once and Future.

Now Keanu Reeves is (and will be) the new protagonist of the

most violent

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• USA

• Netflix

• Europe

• Mexico