Villainous necromancer Master Darque's sister is dying, and in an effort to save her, he has Jack Boniface, his mortal enemy, sent on a quest through time for...something. The time portal Jack was sent through is fading, and can no longer be traversed by anyone corporeal, so Darque reluctantly sends for help from his other enemy, the phantom supernatural investigator Doctor Hwen Mirage and his wife Carmen...
This is the weakest issue of Second Life of Doctor Mirage so far. Not because it's bad, but because it's only a section of a story, and said story is one from the pages of mediocre Valiant series Shadowman (which at this point in time was more confused than ever on whether it was a supernatural horror series, or a science friggin' fiction!). Thanks to this, a lot of pages are devoted to either Jack 'Shadowman' Boniface, or Master Darque, leaving only a scant bundle for the series' main characters. Adding to the morass of other series connections is that this issue contains elements from an Eternal Warrior (another Valiant Comics series) story the Mirages featured in. Unfortunately, said connection will confuse the hell out of you unless you happened to have read Eternal Warrior, as it comes from nowhere, and at no point did Second Life ever mention this crossover.
There's some good dialogue courtesy of Hwen and Carmen, and some amusing humour, but overall, this issue is pretty bare, and for a section of a larger story it gets nothing accomplished.
The artwork is very good as usual. The cover, however, is a total lie! There are no zombies in this story, nor do the Mirages fight alongside Shadowman! And the artwork for Carmen isn't drawn very well at all.
This is the final physical issue of Dr. Mirage I own, so all future reviews will have images, thankfully. One thing of note about my copy of Second Life Issue #5 is that the editor screwed up, and two pages are swapped around!
That's all there is to say about Issue #5 of The Second Life of Dr. Mirage. Far be it from me to say that you should skip any issue of this fantastic series...But yeah, I'm totally saying you can skip this one...
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