It’s hard to not make the obvious comparison between 7 Psychopaths and Inglorious Basterds, both of them being about a team of slightly crazy people in World War II trying to assassinate Hitler. Once you move past that, though, the first issue this comic imported from France has little else in common with Quentin Tarantino’s film. 7 Psychopaths is a much more sedate story, at least so far, but at the same time Fabien Vehlmann and Sean Phillips are doing a good enough job that you’ll want to read more about these seven psychopaths.

Originally published as a longer album, Boom! Studios is serializing 7 Psychopaths into individual issues, and so far I’m pleased that they’ve found a good place to stop at the end of the issue, and are paying attention to the adaptation into this slightly different format. Vehlmann’s story moves at a leisurely pace because of its original longer page count, but it never feels like it’s dragging its feet. We discover the plan to send seven deranged people into Germany to go after Hitler, and while the reason for just seven is a little out there, you do also have to consider the source of the insane person that has come up with the plan in the first case. From there, it’s a typical "assemble the troops" series of scenes, except of course that so far each of the squad members has their own specific problem. It’s entertaining, but reading it serialized made me wish for the entire volume in one fell swoop so we could get to the action.

The big attraction, though, is Phillips’s art. It’s as beautiful as his work on books like Criminal and Incognito, able to draw character portraits that are striking and full at the same time. As strange as it may sound, though, it’s some of the layouts of 7 Psychopaths that gets me the most excited. He’s able to use the original oversized dimensions of these pages to play around with the extra space; on one early page, he keeps slicing away at a square he’s created on its top and left sides until we’re whittled down to the final panel in the bottom right corner. Other times, he creates almost-mirror duplicates on a page of his layouts, stacking horizontal and vertical panels into configurations that in other hands might be hard to follow but here flow perfectly across the page. None of these layouts ever detract from the storytelling that’s going on here, most importantly, and that’s why at the end of the day you have to raise your metaphorical hat to Phillips.

7 Psychopaths #1 is early enough in this mini-series that it’s hard to judge it too terribly much, but based on this first issue I definitely want to read more. The story’s good so far, and Phillips is unsurprisingly at the top of his game. 7 Psychopaths is part of a seven volume series of books by different creators, and if they’re all this strong, I hope Boom! Studios brings over the rest as well. It’s a good start.

Writing a comic book sequel to a hit movie has got to be a thankless task. It’s a project that by very definition will be compared to something that’s a different form of media, and as a result run the real potential of falling short in the reader’s mind. I guess that’s why I was so impressed, then, with Marie Croall’s script for Finding Nemo: Reef Rescue #1. Reading the comic, it’s hard to not feel like this is something that’s perfectly in tune with the Finding Nemo film.

It’s another typical day under the ocean for Marlin and Nemo; Nemo is going to class under the guidance of Mr. Ray, and Marlin is still the ever-worried father. When a class field trip to the edge of the reef reveals that something is killing the coral, the dim-witted Dory volunteers herself, Marlin, and Nemo to try and figure out what’s causing the blight. But have the three fish bitten off more than they can chew?

Croall really nails the Finding Nemo characters in her script. With each line, I could almost hear the different voice actors from the movie. Croall wisely keeps the characters very much the same; after all, Marlin is still going to be overly protective, Dory a little scatterbrained, and Nemo inquisitive. At the same time, though, Marlin is clearly trying to remain a little calmer than you might remember, so it’s not as if the characters operate in a vacuum. What I think I like the most about this first issue of Finding Nemo: Reef Rescue, though, is that it feels like the comic is continuing the movie’s look at the ocean as something both wondrous and threatened. In the movie, of course, it had more to do with fish being taken out of their ecosystem and into aquariums. Here, it’s the imminent destruction of the reef. But it’s still present, and it’s a story that doesn’t feel like a generic children’s comic with underwater elements grafted onto it.

I have to admit that I wasn’t quite as crazy about Erica Leigh Currey’s art for Finding Nemo: Reef Rescue. It’s not bad, but it doesn’t quite hit the strengths of the source material. While I wasn’t expecting it to look like Pixar’s gorgeous computer-generated creatures, I couldn’t help but feel that Currey and colorists Digikore really missed on the whole vibrant, colorful, teaming-with-life look of Finding Nemo. The comic seems to lack on having lots of fish and colors here, and that’s a real shame. The huge schools of fish and the amazing looks that they sport seem like something that should be a natural for a comic version of the movie. It feels like an easy catch that’s ignored entirely.

Other than that, though, the art has some strong points. I love that Currey can make a fish actually look worried; a fish’s face, after all, is hardly an expressive looking construction. Currey manages, here, and from a lost Dory to an exasperated Marlin, she gets the looks just quite right. The storytelling is solid and carefully constructed here; nice simple page layouts, although I appreciate that Currey will make an exception for moments like when Dory surprises Marlin, using a diagonally angled panel that almost explodes onto the page.

The complaint I have with the writing of Finding Nemo: Reef Rescue #1 is that the issue doesn’t seem to use the serial nature of this mini-series at all well. At the end of the first issue, the story doesn’t come to a cliffhanger, or even an appropriate chapter break. Instead, it just stops. It feels almost like this was originally written as a graphic novel and then chopped into four pieces. While it will no doubt work better in a collected form, as a single comic it slightly falls down in that regard. Still, it’s a pleasant and fun comic, and Croall makes the writing work so well here that it’s definitely a success. Kids who loved Finding Nemo will love Finding Nemo: Reef Rescue.

I remember when Mark Waid wrote the mystery series Ruse back in the day. It was a fun shift into a genre that few English-language titles have explored, even as it does well in other countries. When I heard that The Unknown was in some ways a return to that genre from Waid, I was looking forward to it. What I didn’t expect to find, though, was a very different sort of mystery waiting to be told.

Cat Allingham is a bit of a minor celebrity in crime circles. She’s the one who not only cracked the new Zodiac Killer’s code, but confronted the murderer on her own with the police refused to listen. Now she’s on call for just about every sort of case imaginable, from missing objects to mysterious deaths. When a box mysteriously vanishes from the center of a quantum experiment gone haywire, even Cat’s new assistant Doyle knows that Cat seems unusually interested in recovering the missing equipment. It looks like Cat has one mystery of her own that she’s depending on the box to solve, not herself…

The idea of an investigator with a terminal illness who desperately wants to know if there’s an afterlife is certainly a strong hook for a story. Once that idea is revealed in the first issue, it suddenly puts the basic premise (as well as the title) for The Unknown in a different light. It’s certainly not a normal mystery story at that point, if only because the solution being looked for is in many ways a one-way ticket towards discovery. It’s a "big issue" sort of story, and I’ll be honest that I do worry that The Unknown almost can’t live up to the high bar it’s set for itself when it comes to a conclusion. With the introduction of what looks like supernatural elements in the second issue, The Unknown seems to be veering into a way that I’m not entirely sure will be as compelling as that initial concept. On the other hand, Waid is smartly keeping the question of an afterlife from being the sole driving force of this mini-series. In addition to the missing box, there are lots of other little mysteries, observations, and discoveries lurking in the nooks and crannies of this comic. I think that’s where The Unknown really succeeds, as we follow Cat and Doyle along their path of observation and deduction. This isn’t the sort of classic mystery where the reader is encouraged/expected to try and solve the puzzles (if that is what you’re looking for, The Kindaichi Case Files series might be right up your alley), but rather one where the characters reveal their reasoning and logic jumps along the way. It’s a fun story, and Waid never has their discovers be too out-there or unbelievable.

I have to give Minck Oosterveer credit that I think he’s growing more into this comic with each issue, and we’re only two issues in. I think he’s at his best when he draws Cat, who manages to look attractive without ever seeming overly sexualized or out of control beautiful. She’s got just the right level of sass in her body language, someone who is extremely confident in her abilities and doesn’t take no for an answer. I’m a little less crazy about his drawings of Doyle, who seems so overly muscled and inflated that he almost doesn’t seem to fit into the (mostly) real world setting that Waid and Oosterveer have created for The Unknown. He just seems a little too much the stereotypical corn-fed hulking jock, although I think Oosterveer has already sharpened and finessed the general look for Doyle in the second issue. Oosterveer’s definitely good at an action sequence, though; when the characters end up in a fight on a train in the second issue, there’s a nice amount of tension that builds up, as well as a good visual flow from one moment to the next.

The Unknown is shaping up to be a fun mini-series, although I do feel like with its high ambitions that I have to hold back slightly until I see how the conclusion plays out. There’s definitely a real potential here for a good conclusion, though, and I’m going to keep my hopes up high that it hits them. What’s also nice about The Unknown is that it feels like a story that could lend itself to a sequel, or come to a definitive conclusion after just two more issues. The fact that I find myself happy with either possibility says to me that it’s succeeding in its goal to entertain. Definitely take a look.

Who says you can’t go home again? I remember when Seekers Into the Mystery first debuted at the end of 1995. I was reading J.M. DeMatteis’s and Glenn Barr’s collaboration Brooklyn Dreams and being absolutely dazzled by how well they worked together on DeMatteis’s semi-autobiographical story. I was pleased, then, to see that they were collaborating again—but at the time couldn’t shake the feeling that it was the same book but with cast later in life. Re-reading the book now, I can’t help but think that I have a greater appreciation for it now that it’s had some time away from Brooklyn Dreams and can better establish itself as its own work.

Lucas Hart dreamt he could fly as a child, and as soon as he was old enough he went out west to Hollywood to try and become a screenwriter. Now, years later, he’s washed up and pitching scripts to the worst shows on television. He has an ex-wife and daughter who tolerate him, and a girlfriend Rhonda who’s perhaps more than he deserves. But just when his life truly hits a low point, he has a vision of a man known as the Magician, and the pilgrimage of Lucas Hart finally begins.

Seekers Into the Mystery was a series about a man trying to find himself, both mentally and spiritually. In some ways, I can’t help but think that’s why it only ran for 15 issues, because it was bound to scare away readers by its very content. Reading it over a decade later, it’s easy to see the spots that could be easily mocked or used as an excuse to give up on the book. DeMatteis seems to try and mitigate those points as best he can; that make sound a little strange at first, because he wrote the entire series. But they’re moments in the series that clearly meant a lot to him, and so while they’re included, there’s an additional wink to the audience that yes it’s a little odd in spots, due to the presence of an older, reflective Lucas Hart serving as a narrator remembering these events from his past. It mostly works, I think, because of this. Older Lucas Hart is in on the joke with us; he’s got the distance from the events to be able to nod ruefully in just the right spots, but at the same time he’s still bringing us to these points in his life because (silly or not) they’re key elements in how he finds himself.

The spiritual aspect of Seekers Into the Mystery feels like an amalgamation of many different faiths and beliefs, rather than a single religion, group, or spiritual path that DeMatteis based it upon. In spots it’s a little distracting, because it’s hard to not keep picking at the tangle of ideas and trying to see where each individual strand is originally from. What’s interesting, though, is that at least in the first volume you can take Seekers Into the Mystery as so many different possible ways without any of them being invalidated. Is it something religious? Alien? Hallucinatory? A combination of some or all? It’s actually a little hard to say, especially with some of the more traumatic moments in the book. Those moments themselves can be a little hard to handle, but not only because of what happened but how the aftermath plays out. Even now, re-reading the final fate of Lucas’s father, it can be a tough moment to take. I have to give DeMatteis credit for taking the route that he does with the story, because it certainly isn’t an easy answer given to the reader or to Lucas Hart.

Glenn Barr’s art in the first four issues is as beautiful as I remembered it. It’s a rough, squiggled style that reminds me in many ways of those early sketches that artists create to help map out facial features and shapes of people’s bodies. Except, in the case of Barr’s art, he’s done so in a way that feels more finished and complete; all of the texture and contours of the characters are there, but it’s polished without losing those original raw sketches and shapes that one would create when feeling through the initial moments. The last chapter is drawn by another former collaborator of DeMatteis, in this case Jon J Muth. (Muth would also draw the final chapters of what will hopefully be the other two volumes of Seekers Into the Mystery.) The shift over to Muth is surprisingly seamless; while the two have very different finished styles, Muth clearly takes a cue from Barr and alters the looks of his characters accordingly, while still saying true to his own, heavily inked method of art. Muth’s probably at his best drawing portraits of times past in his chapter, but even his panel-to-panel work is attractive to look at. It’s a rare non-painted contribution from Muth, and it’s a nice reminder that he’s quite good at other styles of art, too.

Thanks to it being so long since it was first published, it’s much harder to remember the exact comparisons between Brooklyn Dreams and Seekers Into the Mystery, and I think that’s a good thing. While they’re both books about finding one’s self, Seekers Into the Mystery certainly heads into a different direction, and it’s nice that it can do so in the 21st century without most of its readers forever glancing into a different direction. Hopefully we’ll see the remaining two volumes of Seekers Into the Mystery before too long; not only so the beautiful art from Michael Zulli, Jill Thompson, and Jon J Muth will get reprinted, but so all the other readers who head on Lucas Hart’s journey get to see its conclusion. I remember being attracted to DeMatteis’s honest and open nature of his scripts for Seekers Into the Mystery back in the day, and it’s nice to go on that journey one more time.

Purchase Links: Amazon.com | Powell’s Books

It’s always seemed a little strange to me that there haven’t been many The Muppet Show comics. Aside from movie adaptations, you can round up most of their comic appearances in the form of Muppet Babies comics, and to me that really isn’t quite the same. I was pretty pleased, as a result, to hear that Boom! Studios had not only ended up with The Muppet Show license but that Roger Langridge was writing and drawing the book. Because quite frankly, if there’s one cartoonist out there who truly "gets" the The Muppet Show, it’s Langridge.

It’s another typical day at the Muppet Show; musical numbers are heading on stage, back stage is chaos, and Statler and Waldorf are still hating any and every act to grace the stage. The other Muppets are worried, though, thanks to an unusually melancholy Kermit moping about behind stage. If Kermit can’t have his normal fire to lead the show, what hope do the rest of them possibly have of moving forward? And is there anything that they can do to cheer him up?

First off, I have to say how happy I am that Langridge isn’t just doing a comic about Muppets, he’s doing a genuine The Muppet Show comic. By that, I mean it’s like reading a print version of the original television show; back stage drama, actual musical numbers and sketches, the whole works. There’s even a special guest appearance by a celebrity, something I wasn’t expecting to see in a comic version of the show. (Although here, said celebrities are thinly disguised as someone else, no doubt to avoid any potential legal situations.) And, just like the original program, it’s a nice mixture of recurring and new sketches; I just about cheered when Kermit did one of his reporter segments, for example, or we get the Muppet news anchor. By the time I finished reading The Muppet Show #1, I wanted to race out and buy all the DVDs of the television show. Langridge has a strong grasp of what makes the show tick, with one off-jokes as well as an overarching story throughout the entire issue that slowly gets resolved even as the show continues to move forward.

The art is also a real delight; Langridge manages to both make all of the various characters recognizable as well as keeping the entire comic in his own style. So for example, while Gonzo doesn’t look like a photographic reference of the character, it still feels like the character with his sheepish grin, hooked nose, and blue feathers. (Or is that fur? I’ve never managed to figure that out.) The entire book is really sharply presented, from old-fashioned transition cards for the start of new skits, to easter eggs for Muppet aficionados. (Beauregard the Janitor meeting George the Janitor in the background of the opening splash page is just one of the fine details that Langridge crams into the book.)

Best of all, have I mentioned that The Muppet Show #1 is just plain funny? It’s hard to not just crack a smile from start to finish, here. The idea of trying to transition a sketch comedy show into a comic book seems like a thankless task, but Langridge just makes it look easy. After I read the first issue of The Muppet Show, half an hour later I found myself still humming the theme song to the television show. Langridge has knocked this one out of the park. Highly recommended.

By now, I think most people know how some "gimmick" comics work. The most popular/well-known is the 24-hour comic, where the creator(s) of the comic have just 24 hours to conceive of, write, draw, and letter a completed comic book. What I’m actually more intrigued with, though, is Kathryn and Stuart Immonen’s tactic for creating Never As Bad As You Think. Originally serialized online, each strip was written by using a word chosen randomly by another website. Then, as soon as Kathryn Immonen wrote the script, Stuart Immonen had to start drawing that week’s creation. Not only is it an interesting challenge, but the impressive thing is that Never As Bad As You Think comes across as if it was always planned this way.

It probably helps that at some point in the process, Kathryn Immonen decided that she didn’t need to perpetually follow the same two characters through all of Never As Bad As You Think. So while the book starts with two characters meeting in a cafe, it quickly moves on from there, as one person’s story slowly bleeds into the next person, who detaches from the first person and eventually moves the story onto yet a new person, and so forth. It’s a tricky sort of storytelling to pull off, with the danger being that it won’t take much to lose your reader’s interest entirely. That’s not something you have to worry about here, though. After all, if Kathryn Immonen can tackle a superheroine/supermodel transplanted into a mystical Alaskan tundra, well, this is easy. So sure, there’s no huge over-arcing plot, but it’s a light and fun story, and Kathryn Immonen does a lot with each little character sketch as we visit with our latest protagonists.

Stuart Immonen’s art is, unsurprisingly, beautiful. It’s not as realistically rendered as his work on books like Superman: Secret Identity, but it doesn’t need to be here. Instead it’s a little more iconic, like his Nextwave art but taken to its next level. Stuart Immonen isn’t afraid to play with the basic page structure here; the temptation would certainly be to find a panel arrangement and stick with it, but you can see that Stuart Immonen is laying each page out carefully based on what would work best for the drawings within those panels. There are some nice stylistic tricks here, too, like the panel with a traffic accident suddenly shifting to reds and blacks, or an emergency medical technician having reflections on his window crisscross his face. Add in the nice gentle colors—not everything needs to be day-glow and full of lens flares, and it’s hard to beat the beautiful blues and oranges that we get here—and it’s a winner in the art department, too.

Never As Bad As You Think is a handsome book, and I can see why it’s making the jump from online to print; I’d certainly want to have a copy sitting around on my coffee table for people to ooh and ahh over as well. Knowing that Kathryn and Stuart Immonen are currently collaborating on a much more planned, methodically-approached graphic novel for Top Shelf at the end of the year makes me that much happier; if this is what they did together when just working on an artistic challenge, just imagine what the new project will be like. Until then, though, this is a nice addition to both of their libraries.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again—more often than not, it’s not a matter of what story you’re telling, but rather how you’re telling it. There are some basic story ideas that we’ve seen over and over again, like a person who uses magic to steal. What’s important, though, is what you bring to that idea to make it feel different. Basic ideas are a dime a dozen. In the case of Hexed, though, it’s the world and the characters that make this book stand out from the rest.

Luci Jenifer Inacio Das Neves, or Lucifer for short, is a thief. Need something retrieved that requires more than just a set of lock picks? Look no further than her. She’ll be through the magical wards, curses, and anything else in the blink of an eye. The only problem she has right now is that an old boss—one that she bolted from—has just come back and is looking for repayment for the job she never completed. And just call it a hunch, but Lucifer’s pretty sure that even if she is able to financially repay him, he’ll still be looking for some sort of additional cost. Hey, she never said her job was easy.

Michael Alan Nelson’s world of Hexed is where celestial body parts can be stolen, spell-trapped safes can be absorbed by stuffed bunnies, and gateways to other dimensions are opened up inside of corpses. It’s an almost-immediately enchanting sort of setting (no pun intended), where it’s so similar to our own world, and yet just different enough to keep you guessing. I like that he doesn’t lay everything out at once—there’s no big lump of expository knowledge heaped upon the reader—but if you pay attention to what’s going on, you’re easily able to figure out just what is happening and how everything fits together. It helps that Lucifer herself is an engaging protagonist; she’s neither little miss sunshine nor a doom and gloom kind of person, just someone who calls it as she sees it and makes her way forward the best she can. I like that even at her most matter-of-fact moments, she can still show a sense of wonder and not be entirely jaded by everything that happens.

At the same time, there’s a lot to be curious about in terms of plot. Nelson clearly has an entire history plotted out for Lucifer as well as her world, and the hints we get are tantalizing. I genuinely want to see more of the celestial hierarchy of Hexed, more of the different types of spells and counter-spells, more of everything. It’s a compliment when I say that in some ways Hexed feels like the setting for the ultimate role-playing game, where there’s always more interesting and cool things just around the corner waiting to be discovered by you.

Emma Rios’s art is pretty pleasing to the eye; she draws her characters with a sort of grace and ease about them that makes them feel real. There’s a panel about halfway through Hexed #1 where Lucifer is yawning and stretching while being questioned by her client, and it just feels so natural that you can’t help but believe that you’re seeing a real person. Rios also has to tackle some big, larger-than-life things in Hexed #1, and on the whole I’d say she succeeds. I love the huge monstrous spell trap on the vault leaping out at the stuffed bunny that Lucifer sets in its path, for instance; it looks like fire and heat erupting outwards, something that readers can easily then connect to it being a spell effect instead of something more mundane. Sometimes some of the smaller details can get lost in the shuffle—it wasn’t until the third time I looked at that panel that I realized that Lucifer is there, pulling the door open—but that’s usually the exception rather than the rule.

Hexed #1 is a strong debut for this mini-series; it’s got an engaging setting and world, and it’s easy to see the lure to pick up the second issue. A lot of Boom! Studios’s books seem aimed squarely at attracting other media attention, and I can see Hexed achieving that easily. I know I’d want to see a Hexed movie if it was as fun as this first issue. More importantly, though, I want to read the rest of Hexed right away, and that is a very good sign. Well done, all involved.

Most people, if asked what they’d do with knowledge of the future, answer along the lines of, “Win the lottery.” Once you get past the most materialistic urges, though, the bigger question becomes what would people do if they could get brief snatches of information about the years to come? John Rozum’s new series The Foundation takes that tactic with a particularly well-known figure when it comes to future predictions. The end result, though, seems a little too predictable at first.

The Foundation has a team that is busy deciphering the prophecies of the infamous Nostradamus, who claimed to have seen the future. Valentine is an operative for the Federation, but he doesn’t figure out the prophecies. Rather, he’s the one sent to make sure that they happen according to schedule. But how long can he turn a blind eye to other people’s fates at the expensive of a single life to be saved?

Rozum takes a slightly different tactic than I’d have expected to kick off The Foundation. Rather than keep the punchline to the situation a mystery—a single person being saved from a doomed flight preparing to board—Rozum states everything up front almost immediately. The drive of the issue isn’t what’s going on, but rather, how will our protagonist be able to respond to it? It’s an interesting ethical dilemma, saving one person that you’re told has to life, but being forced to abandon everyone else. Valentine’s indecision is a good plot point, and you can tell it’s that turmoil that will continue to drive the rest of the mini-series. The problem is, it’s a half-issue set-up that’s stretched into an entire issue. Rozum delays the action too long, hitting the same emotional beats over and over again as Valentine takes his passenger captive. By the time the plane takes off, you’re almost relieved that the disaster will happen, just so the comic can finally move on. It’s frustrating, because the basic concept is a good one, and Rozum seems ready to explore it to its full potential. It just goes on too long in this single situation; some of the time could have just as easily been spent examining the rest of the Foundation, or even setting up Valentine’s next mission. Instead, one feels like everything is dragging to fill up an entire issue instead of because it was the space needed.

Chee’s art in The Foundation is pleasant, if not extraordinary. He has a nice blocky, solid style of drawing the story. His people all have a similar rugged, strong-jawed look about them; it’s a good general approach, although it does cause a bit of unintentional hilarity when a character changes one mask for another and at a glance it’s hard to tell what the difference is, save for an eye-patch. Chee is good at storytelling, though; he’s able to inject a nice bit of drama into the story thanks to good viewpoints in the panels, the occasional different angle to keep a multi-page scene of two people in a restroom more interesting. His art works especially well with the coloring from Malaka Studio—scenes like the plane finally taking off end up looking beautiful, a combination of those rough, blocky edges with a painted hue about them.

The Foundation #1 is a slightly promising, but also slightly problematic start to a five-issue mini-series. With any luck, future installments will be moving at a slightly faster clip now that the basic premise is out there. It’s a good idea, and Rozum definitely has ideas on where he wants to go with it. If future issues move at this same slightly-glacial speed, though, the series could be in trouble. Not being a psychic myself, the only advice I can offer is to wait and see. But until then, here’s hoping for a rosy future.

There’s an old adage that there are only a limited number of plots in the world, and that every story is just a slight variation on those ideas. (Some people claim the actual number is three, others go for seven. The fact that there’s no clear consensus on the number of actual plots says a lot in its own right.) But on a similar level, I think it is fair to say that just as two stories with the same “plot” can be radically different, so can different stories with the same basic set-up. So when I say that Mark Waid and Paul Azaceta’s Potter’s Field reminds me of Andy Helfer, Bill Sienkiewicz, and Kyle Baker’s run on The Shadow from the mid-80s, I’m not claiming that Waid and Azaceta are stealing or ripping off The Shadow. Rather, that it’s a familiar set-up that will certainly make fans of the old book a little nostalgic and probably very happy.

Potter’s Field is where the unknown bodies are buried in a cemetery; nameless, unclaimed, the only record of their life is an assigned number engraved on an otherwise blank stone marker. That’s where John Doe comes in. No one knows who he is or why he tirelessly struggles to discover the real identity of each person buried in the City of New York’s Potter’s Field. With his network of agents assisting him—some willingly, others not so much—John Doe will put the mystery of their lives and deaths to rest, one at a time.

One of the things that grabbed my attention so much with the Helfer version of The Shadow (and originally set up by Howard Chaykin’s earlier mini-series) was the idea that this was a mysterious man who had a wide array of agents assisting him, from police officers and pharmacists to high school teachers and food critics. With The Shadow, though, in many ways the group was one big happy family that over time all knew each other and got along. With Potter’s Field, Waid uses the same structure but in a much more interesting and logical way; John Doe’s agents not only don’t know each other, they don’t even know who John Doe really is. I love the element of distrust that Doe and his agents have, because it increases the level of mystery about him. It makes him seem that much more enigmatic; discovering that he doesn’t leave fingerprints behind is so-so, but learning that because one of his assistants is dusting for them to try and find out who Doe is? Now that’s a much more intriguing fact to me.

As an introductory, self-contained story, Potter’s Field #1 does everything right to make you want to read more. You see how Doe works, the case of a young girl’s death is solved, and everything is tied up in a neat bow—aside from the last-page lead-in to the next issue, of course. It’s a smart move, because you get a strong feel for what this comic is about, and while there’s a good hook for the next installment, at the same time you never feel like Waid is stringing you along; you get your money’s worth in the first issue and a complete reading experience. It’s concise storytelling, something that is missing far too often in comics these days.

I don’t recall seeing Azaceta’s art before, but it’s a sharp finished product. Along with colorist Nick Filardi they create a look that reminds me of painted sequential art along the lines of Tommy Lee Edwards or John Van Fleet; strong but not over-rendered ink lines, while remaining rich in background detail. Every scene, be it a cemetery, a street corner, or an empty apartment, is carefully designed and fleshed out to look real. It really helps place Potter’s Field in the real world, making it feel like somewhere you’ve been or seen in the past. Azaceta’s panel composition is also sharp; from shadows falling across John Doe’s body as he enters a darkened room, to Doe leaning up against a table in a coroner’s office, everything feels natural and at the same time draws the reader’s eye to the center of the scene, keeping the right elements at the forefront. If Azaceta doesn’t have companies knocking on his door offering him work, he certainly will once they see Potter’s Field.

It wasn’t until I was re-reading the issue to write the review that I noticed that Potter’s Field is scheduled to be a three-issue mini-series. Now while it may turn out that Waid already has an ending plotted out, I hope that this is more a case of testing the waters. There’s an endless amount of story potential in this comic, and I for one would cheerfully buy comics of this quality every month. This is definitely one of Waid’s strongest books in years, and hopefully it’s just the start of a lot more to come. Highly recommended.