Luke Owen reviews the first part of the Born to Lose trilogy, Burn the Orphanage…
A young orphan named Rock was left for dead, now he’s out for revenge! With partners Lex and Bear by his side, our hero will find out who burned his home and family to the ground. If that means taking on every goon, punk, and topless stripper ninja in the city… then so be it.
The first part of Daniel Freedman and Sina Grace’s Born to Lose trilogy, Burn the Orphanage is a fun and violent romp that takes a lot of inspiration from 80s revenge movies as well as video games of the early 90s.
As an orphan child, Rock’s home was burnt to the ground killing everyone inside except for him. Now 20 years later, he is tracking down the person responsible for this to get his revenge. It’s a very simply story but it’s one that works within the pace of the comic. And, of course, the real draw of this comic is the over-the-top fight scenes that take up 70% of the pages.
As mentioned earlier, Burn the Orphanage takes a lot of inspiration from early 90s side-scrolling beat-em-ups, most notably Streets of Rage in the design of Rock and the city and Final Fight in the character of Bear who resembles Haggar in his look and fighting style. The comic even frames one of its scenes to look like a level from one of those games, complete with “fight” caption, presumably as a reference to Street Fighter. It adds a huge level of enjoyment to the comics as it feels like a more grown-up version of the short Streets of Rage stories you’d find in Sonic the Comic.
It also sets and matches the tone this comic is trying to convey. Freedman and Grace take their material seriously but they aren’t take themselves too serious. The preview for the next issue highlights even more comparisons to be made with side scrolling beat-’em ups with descriptions of the items, weapons and moves (including the Haggar Slam from Final Fight).
The only real complaint to be made about Burn the Orphanage is that the artwork doesn’t always work. In one panel, we see Rock putting a jacket on only for it to be missing in the following panel and then back in the next. It could be argued that this is intentional as a ‘movie goof’ that movies from the 80s were known for, but it’s a tenuous link. There’s also a moment when explaining Lex’s backstory which is in the same colour tones as the current timeline which did create some confusion. Even stranger is that later on the comic, we see another backstory with a deep sepia tone. Finally, there are a couple of panels were you don’t really feel the weight of the fights as Grace draws their punches and kicks fairly weakly. For the most part it’s all great, but there are a couple of inconsistencies that stop this from being a truly great comic.
As is, Burn the Orphanage is a lot of fun and a series to certainly keep an eye on, both as a solo story and as the first part of a trilogy. The story is simple but effective, the fight scenes are mostly good and the little nods to the aforementioned video games can flick a few nostalgia switches for some readers.
Plus, stripper ninjas.
Luke Owen is one of Flickering Myth’s co-editors and the host of Flickering Myth’s Podcast Network. You can follow him on Twitter @LukeWritesStuff.
Originally published August 6, 2013. Updated November 7, 2019.
