The Second Life of Dr. Mirage #6 and #7 (Classic Valiant)

After an encounter with evil necromancer Master Darque, paranormal investigator/scientist Hwen Mirage was left an intangible phantom. Luckily, he was saved from death by his wife, Carmen Ruiz, and the two fought Darque back. Much later, after a reluctant team-up with Darque (to save the superhero Shadowman), the couple leave his New Orleans estate, not realizing that a mysterious black substance has latched onto Carmen's shoe. Hwen is feeling more down than ever that he can't go out into society in his ghostly form, but the fact that the clothes he died in (and is therefore permanently stuck in) is a ski outfit gives Carmen the idea to set up a holiday to the snowy mountains of Aspen, Colorado. The duo have fun for what they tell friends is a second honeymoon, but unfortunately the evil Doctor Eclipse has followed them, and as he sucks dry anyone he comes across, he plans to devour Hwen's necromantic essence...

This story from supernatural horror domestic comedy series The Second Life of Doctor Mirage is well-written. While not a whole lot happens over the course of the two issues to really warrant this being a two-parter, it isn't wasteful, at least. The humour in this series is, as usual, funny. I especially love the title to Issue #7-When Hwen Won One.

Hwen and Carmen are smart, resourceful main characters, and the way they solve their problems and fight back is definitely nicely inventive, although I suppose it is a bit convenient that they just so happen to head for silver mines which contain the one substance that naturally counters necromantic energy.

Dr. Eclipse is creepy at first, when you don't see his face, and he's methodically horrifically murdering people...But then he starts talking. Now, unlike other Valiant fans, I don't dislike Dr. Eclipse. Yeah, he is a one-note villain, but I find his gleefully murderous insanity to be amusing, and it can be creepy at times, especially with how his face looks-Unfortunately he's not his usual self this issue, as he's a mess due to the events of other Valiant series Secret Weapons Issues #1 and #2. He gets a few lines of proper crazy dialogue, but mostly he just says "Eclipse needs Darque power" a lot. Too much! Also, he doesn't have a doctorate...Yes, I'm aware he's an insane necromantic protean psychopath, but having a supervillain call themselves Doctor just for style is not cool!

One slightly annoying aspect about these two comics is that they say the word Darque so many times! I don't even get why the characters always call necromantic energy 'Darque power'. He neither invented it, nor is he worthy in any way to have the energy named after him!

The biggest problem with this story is that the timeline of Carmen's backstory doesn't add up. How could she have been in a previous marriage? She and Hwen first started dating when they were young and in college, so either she was married before college, which would make her very young when she did so, or she studied for a really long time, or she was married for only about four weeks (which isn't the case, as it's mentioned that she and her previous husband frequently vacationed across the U.S.).

My final complaints with these issues are two random pieces of dialogue. There's one moment where the writer gets 'impulsive' mixed up with 'compulsive'. and there's an unintentionally hilarious part where a guy's dying screams are "Yeeeeaahhh!". The intent is that it's like 'yeaaaagh', but there are too few repeated A's' to make it look like a scream, and it instead sounds like a surfer dude has just found a sweet ride.

The artwork in these issues is very good! The only downfall is Carmen's face in one panel at the start of  #7 is weirdly angular.

The cover to Issue #6 is nifty, and #7's is decent, but the lack of a background is irksome, and since the cover is so bare, the TM logo is painfully obvious.

Mainly due to its being spread out over more space than necessary, these issues of The Second Life of Doctor Mirage aren't quite as great as usual, but they're still entertaining, and I definitely recommend them!...

Solar, Man of the Atom #1, #2, #3, and #4 (Classic Valiant)

I've said many, many times that I don't like Valiant Comics series Solar, Man of the Atom. Tonight, I'm here to elaborate on my disdain for this red-jumpsuited dickhead!

When Jim Shooter and others started Valiant Comics, their first series' were remakes of two Gold Key properties from the '60's. While their version of Magnus, Robot Fighter was a straight continuation of the original series (albeit with tons of added depression), they approached Solar, Man of the Atom differently. Instead of doing a regular remake, they instead tried to go the deconstructive route. Tried, failed, and abandoned!...

After some unexplained disaster has happened to the universe, a man named Phil Seleski is flung back in time, and has to stop his past self, a nuclear scientist at Edgewater nuclear facility from repeating the same mistakes that caused the catastrophe. Things get complicated, however, when the fictional comic book character Doctor Solar (a favourite of Seleski's) comes out from Seleski's mind, and wants to destroy him for what he did to the universe. Seleski manages to evade Solar, who thinks he's destroyed his target, and while Seleski tries to stop his past self from running a new nuclear fusion reactor, Doctor Solar, stuck in an unfamiliar world, seeks out help...


#1-No Place Like Home

This issue is a confusing mess. It starts off in media res, following a superpowered guy we know nothing about, while occasionally cutting to a guy named Doctor Phil Seleski...who we know nothing about. The only thing that really happens this issue is a superpowered dude flying around the world stopping a few random problems because Full Stop. One almost positive is that this shows off the character's superpowers, but they're vaguely explained, so we still know nothing.

The writing is pretty nothing for this issue, and the narration from the original Seleski is confusing at times, and reads like this story is meant to be read after the Alpha and Omega storyline...which was impossible!

What is Alpha and Omega, you ask? It's the origin story of Valiant's Solar, and it was spread out over the first ten, I am not joking, ten, issues of this series! So after a ten month wait, readers finally knew the origin of the fucking character they've spent nearly a year reading about! Not only is the time it took to tell this story unacceptable, but so was the placement. In each of these ten issues, there's a 6-page insert in the middle of Alpha and Omega. Only six pages! And two of them in this first issue are splash pages! I'll talk about it in detail in another post.

There are other annoying aspects of this comic, such as the fact that comparisons are constantly drawn over these four issues that the original Seleski and the regular one look like dead ringers for each-other (these people not knowing it's two different versions of the same person), when they actually look very different.

One moment I facepalmed at was when the original Seleski saves a floundering Russian sub, then steals its nukes. To stop him, the Russian soldiers start trying to shoot him down...using anti-air weapons at the flying man stealing their missiles, while said missiles are right next to him! And these missiles are nukes! This comic is dumb!

Overall, nothing is accomplished in this first issue, nor at any point does the reader know what's going on. Ya know what else is missing? ANYTHING TO DO WITH SOLAR, MAN OF THE ATOM!

#2-Out of My Mind

It's in this issue where Solar properly first appears, and the narrative suddenly starts following him. As for the original Seleski, he starts calling himself Max Blackwell (and declares himself a supervillain now for reasons only Jim Shooter knows), which compounds the confusion, as we don't know who he is yet, hence we have no idea that he's using a pseudonym. In fact, this is so confusing that the only summary of Valiant Solar issues I could ever find on the net* thinks there are four Phil Seleski's going around-The original, the regular one, the comic Solar, and the supervillain Max Blackwell!

The narration really gets confusing when the story starts following Doctor Solar instead of the original Seleski, yet the original is still the one with the narration boxes. You don't know who the hell is talking!

*By the way, if you're curious on the events of the issues of Solar, Man of the Atom, you're out of luck. Thankfully, there is a Valiant wiki online, so let's say you can't find the last issue of Shadowman, and you want to know how the series ends, you can read this wiki, and you'd find out. Simple. Done...Except this wiki lacks any and all articles on Solar, Magnus, and Turok! I have no idea why! I get that these series aren't available digitally in any way due to bullcrap rights issues, but why the heck does that also mean that they have no wiki page on this site?! So, yeah, if you're curious on how Solar and Turok end, like me, there is pretty much no way to find out.

While the plot is still confusing and unexplained as well, this issue is at least more straightforward. Of course, you have no idea why this straightforward plot is happening, but it's something you can latch onto.

#3-Reality Check

With its plot of the comic Doctor Solar in the real world with no idea what to do, or if a hero could even exist in the real world, this issue's concept is actually really interesting!...so it's a shame that not only is this conceit ignored for the latter two thirds of this issue, but it's permanently abandoned by the series one issue later! This series is so goddamn schizo that I'm surprised it didn't split apart like Phil Seleski!

This issue too is a mess! It starts off, like I said, with the fictional Doctor Solar pondering his place in the real world...And then the plot suddenly railroads into a completely different and random direction as Solar checks out the Harbinger Foundation (a big player in the Valiant universe). Um, wasn't there a plot about a superpowered guy from a future universe trying to avert a nuclear disaster here somewhere? This issue's plot is completely out of left field, and it's most unwelcome!

I really wish that this whole series was about the fictional Doctor Solar in the real world. That would have been really interesting, seeing a Silver Age superhero trying to fit in and find his place in an unfamiliar world, and it also would have deprived us of the bullshit we have to endure with the rest of this series! This fictional Doctor Solar? He's an honest do-good hero. The Solar we get once he's merged with Phil Seleski at the end of Issue #4? A guy who leaves not one, not two, but three villains in situations where they'll either starve to death, or go horribly insane! One villain he condemns to reliving her worst memories (which include a lifetime of abuse and incest rape) for the rest of eternity! And Solar is also indirectly responsible for the creation of a race of alien robots that slaughter trillions of humans in the future. *clap clap clap*. It'd be one thing if we weren't meant to like this Solar (and if that was the case, then why the hell should we bother reading the series?), but we are! The comic thinks he's a good guy! Seeing the dialogue pictured below is both hilarious and painful in hindsight when you realize just how badly the series ignores this mindset.

This issue's final crime is that it disses Captain Planet!...Yeah, Captain Planet is stupid, but not any moreso than Solar, Man of the friggin' Atom!

#4-...All For One

The plot to Solar, Man of the Atom's first arc concludes with this issue, and it doesn't end well!

The unexplained plot is absolutely baffling enough, but there are plot holes aplenty with this arc, such as: Why hasn't the original Seleski ever actually done something to stop the Edgewater reactor test? He's tried getting one of the project's lead scientists Doctor Pierce drunk and sleeping in the day of the test, but neglects to do anything, like, say, DESTROY THE REACTOR! For a so-called supervillain, you'd think property damage wouldn't phase him all that much, especially given that the whole world is at stake!

This issue isn't any better than what's come before when it comes to exploring the plot, and we still have no idea what Phil Seleski's origin is! What happened to the world that he's so desperate to avoid?! At this point, four issues (and four months) into the story, the reader should know, otherwise they have no reason to keep reading.

This issue tries to be deconstructive of the superhero genre by having the original Seleski mock Doctor Solar's comic book grip of science...yet this issue's actual grip on science is laughably poor itself! You know why Phil Seleski got superpowers despite being in the realsie-real world? Because his nuclear reactor was really...a wish machine. I wish I was joking! This is like if you drink ten Jager shots in a row, watch Aladdin, then the last twenty minutes of A Nightmare on Elm Street, read a bunch of Gold Key Doctor Solar comics, then wrote your own comic the next morning from your twisted dreams.

The final problem to this issue is that it ends really abruptly. Eighty pages to tell a story, and it still ends too quickly! *sigh*...

Overall

There's not really all that much left to discuss about this storyline (named Second Death) of Solar than the artwork. It's decent. The covers are pretty meh, though.

To finish, I find Solar, Man of the Atom to be a series that had potential, but wasted it horribly. These issues are boring, confusing, and what good stuff there is is either never followed up on ever again, and are just missed opportunities. It's nearly impossible to find issues of Valiant's Solar, and believe me when I say that that's for the best!...

The Phantom: Lead-in

In the 16th century, a sailing ship was attacked by pirates, and the only survivor washed up on the shores of Bengali, a large African country. The man was found and nursed back to health by the Bandar tribe, and swore to fight evil wherever it sprung, creating the Phantom lineage. He and each successive ancestor would wear the Phantom outfit and pretend to be the same man, so people would think the Phantom to be an immortal spirit. Now in the 21st century, the superstition shows no signs of stopping, as Kit Walker, the 21st Phantom, fights criminals and pirates all over the globe...

Created by Lee Falk in 1936, The Phantom is not only one of the first, if not THE first, superheroes, but one of the most famous pulp comic heroes, having been around ever since his creation., whether it be in actual issues, or in the daily strips in newspapers (which is...uh...one hell of a way to read a comic). He has many good and interesting qualities, such as the fact that we have never seen his face (same with Judge Dredd), the intriguing backstory of the Phantom lineage, and the ingenious concept, allowing for adventures in both the modern day, and in various other eras, from the Civil War, to pirate times, to revolutionary France, 1930's Hollywood, etc.

Australia is one of the biggest customers of The Phantom, with sorta-weekly releases, starting all the way back in 1948, and running uninterrupted to this day, resulting in one of the longest continually running comic series' in history! Jesus! And to think there are some comics out there that can't make twenty issues! All in all, quite an achievement for a superhero who looks like a coloured dildo.

Yeah, I'm going there. Am I used to The Phantom being bright purple. Of course. Do I enjoy it? Absolutely. Do I understand it?! Hell no! But hey, I'm sure he's a superhero favourite for the gay pride community, and the Suffragettes.

Another funny thing of note is that despite not actually being immortal, the regular Phantom (the 21st) totally is, as the status quo of the series has stayed the same despite the passage of time since the series' inception. He must be following the beauty tips of Elizabeth Bathory...

The possible first superhero ever has also, surprisingly enough, never had a continuity reboot! While there are obvious difficulties reconciling stories from 1950 with ones from 2014, it's all the same canon...Even that time The Phantom fought aliens!...Though not the time he teamed up with Flash Gordon to battle space dinosaurs and the end of the world. Granted, while there are sometimes recurring arcs and characters, most of the time Phantom comics are just self-contained action-crime stories, with no character growth or development at all. It's just a simple formula that makes for fun stories, and nothing more. This is simultaneously good, and bad, as it allows for so many thousands of issues, but it's like watching the same episode of a TV show again and again, slightly different each time-Nothing ever changes.

Other companies have made their own separate Phantom series' like Dynamite's The Last Phantom. From previews I've read, it seems there are multiple aspects that absolutely insult and betray the lore, and it seems to be a pretty depressing read, but I bought the last issue out of curiosity during a Dynamite sale on Comixology, and I rather enjoyed it! Granted, the non-ending is ridiculous, but maybe the full 12-issue series is worth reading.

Oh, and yes, I've seen the Billy Zane movie, but many years ago. From what I remember it's ok, and Zane is an awesome Phantom, which should be obvious, as he's Billy Zane. I haven't seen the 2009 miniseries, but I do know of its many, many betrayals to the source material, such as insulting and getting rid of the iconic costume and replacing it with a cheap Robocop knockoff.

Frew, the company that publishes The Phantom in Australia, has done plenty of advertising recently for their new website, where they have a growing amount of back issues for sale, with plans to have everything up sometime, I suppose. When I first heard this, I was ecstatic, but then I realized that these ads are misinformative, as these back issues are only physical, because unfortunately the idiots who run these things at Frew haven't grasped the concept of digital comics. At thousands of copies of hundreds of issues, that's a lot of paper, so little wonder the prices are so damn steep (at about $7 bucks per comic!). Again, digital comics, dudes! You'd turn in a much better profit, and it's cheaper to do than logging three rainforests for a single series! And cheaper is the best alternative anyway, as there are 1700 back issues! Selling them for, say, simply 20 cents each would only insure that your customers would be able to buy a fuckton of Phantom comics, and to get to 1700 would be a LOT of fucktons!

So, I think that's enough lead-in. I'll start reviewing Frew Phantom comics soon (because God knows no-one else is), but it'll take a little while, as I'll be reviewing about twenty issues per post (given that I own about two/three hundred issues). Enough about the Ghost Who Walks for now...

The Second Life of Doctor Mirage #5 (Classic Valiant)

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...

The H.A.R.D. Corps #6 and #7 (Classic Valiant)

The H.A.R.D. Corps is a superpowered corporate mercenary strike team, with the goal of taking down Toyo Harada, an evil supervillain of extraordinary power. Team member Shakespeare is off-duty for a couple of days, catching up with an old war buddy, but goes missing, and it's up to the rest of the HARD Corps (Gunslinger, Hammerhead, Flatline and Superstar) to find out what happened to him. They soon realize that Shakespeare is a prisoner in a compound run by a small army of aliens, who are scavenging technology as they patiently wait for a future invasion force to come to Earth...

These two issues are mostly just action, but are entertaining, and have well-rounded characters, so I don't mind that the plot isn't exactly Shakespearean for this story. What there is is very good!

A problem with this story that rears up in #7 is a pretty big one-Show, don' tell! There are three moments within twenty pages where characters say the offscreen thing they've just done instead of the comic actually showing us it! A really unbearable result of this is that there is nothing in-between Issue #6's cliffhanger, and the start of #7-The characters got out of the fix offscreen!

The H.A.R.D. Corps is always an easy series to get into, as the dialogue is nicely accommodating for new readers. This issue, for example, dialogue at the start of #6 naturally mentions what Sam did last issue and that the team is now frosty towards him because of it.

The characters are all likeable, and the one to get developed nicely this story is Shakespeare*, as his past friendship with one of the story's villains is very well written!

*He may be a bookish type, but you do not mess with Shakespeare, even if he's greatly weakened, because he will decimate you.

Director Heydrich isn't exactly a majorly developed character at this point, basically just being the M stand-in for the HARD Corps team. This changes later in the series, as he gets even shadier, but for now he's just a guy. As for Ellen (Softcore), we know nothing about her, but her dialogue over this series has gone a little way to rounding her out. I wouldn't say she's a fully fleshed out character, but she's not a cardboard cutout.

While the human villain to this story is very well-written, the other villains are the other downfall of this storyline. Recurring Valiant Comics enemies the spider aliens are always incredibly easy to kill (I have no idea how they consider themselves to be predators and humans merely prey when regular people are fully capable of accidentally dismembering these aliens with bare hands!), and therefore hold no threat. As for their evil leader chick, she is evil, and that's all there is to her.

The artwork here is very good! Bonus points for actually going to the effort of showing frosty breath for characters in one scene in the snow. Another part isn't so good though-The scars on Aaron sometimes look like MS Paint airbrush, and some faces here and there in #7 look a bit awkwardly drawn. The cover to #6 is very good, showing stuff that actually happens in the comic, and is a decent hook to draw readers in. #7's cover is meh. I'm not sure why, but whenever I look at it, it just doesn't interest me. Weird.

The panel layout for these issues is actually pretty bad given their size, meaning there are many four-panel pages, but HARD Corps is one of the only Valiant series' that could successfully tell a complete story in twenty pages, so the layout doesn't affect anything negatively here. Another layout issue is in #6, where there's a splash page at the start that's just of an aliens face!Wasteful much? On the subject of splash pages, I don't get why Valiant felt they always had to have them as the title pages of their comics!

One completely random thing is what Hammerhead says in one part-'kin ay. That's meant to be Fucking A. The comics code didn't exist anymore, Valiant-You can swear if you want to! Apparently wanton violence and gore is fine for Valiant, but swearwords are verboten.

By the way, Issue #6 is another Valiant comic I own in real life rather than Comixology (hence why all the screenshot's I've taken are from #7, and there's no cover for #6 pictured), so there's something random from the pages of my copy that I'd like to talk about. There's an ad teasing the introduction of new HARD Corps team member Hotshot, saying "She's not just one of the boys-Hotshot joins the HARD Corps...and the team will never be the same!"...except that it totally will, because nothing is made of the fact that she's a woman, nor does her introduction do anything to fracture or  the team-They just happen to get a new member, who's a woman.

Due to its 'show, don't tell' problems, these are the weakest issues so far from this series next to the first two, but they're still HARD Corps, so they're still highly entertaining action fun, with great characters to boot! Highly recommended!

The Second Life of Doctor Mirage #4 (Classic Valiant)

A bunch of redneck Suhthen businessmen go to the outskirts of Calcutta, India, where they come across what they find to be a prize bull in the possession of a mysterious villager. The American's violently steal the bull and take it back home, but as the years have gone by and they're paraded the bull across the rodeo circuit, each of the men have died horribly. The baffling circumstances of their deaths leads Duke, the head honcho, to hire paranormal investigators Doctor Hwen and Carmen Mirage to protect his prize bull from these murderous 'thieves'. The Mirages investigate, and pretty quickly realize that the story Duke told them is a lie, but unfortunately the original owner of the bull is hardly one to let the dispute end amicably. He wants the bull-Shiva's Child-back, and he won't stop until everyone who stole it dies horribly, nor will he let Dr. Mirage get in his way...

Like Issue #3 of The Second Life of Doctor Mirage, this is another done-in-one, which is something no Valiant series could ever successfully pull off frequently besides Second Life, and The HARD Corps.

This issue is pure supernatural investigation. This series is always light-hearted in tone, but is not always funny. Not in that it tries to be and fails, but because there are some issues where it just doesn't have any humour. While I wish there was stuff to laugh at here, the lack of it is tolerable, and doesn't make the issue any less entertaining.

The main characters continue to be a fun and likeable duo, with smarts, and brawn. One moment I particularly like is when Hwen is investigating Shiva's Child, and Carmen is on guard outside. She's set upon by a bunch of servants to the villain, and in a different comic, she'd end up being the damsel in distress, but here? Not a chance! Carmen Ruiz is a Brazilian bombshell with some mean capoeira skills!

The villain, Karamchand is ok. He looks threatening, and gets some nifty dialogue, but he's nothing special. As for the bull, Shiva's child, it's an interesting concept, but not explored enough. For a twenty page comic though, it at least gets across enough.

The artwork is very good, as usual. The bull, Shiva's Child, is drawn like a Rob Liefeld character, what with its huuuge back hump, but, that's probably intentional, given that it's a supernatural beastie, so I'll give the art in that regard the benefit of the doubt. The cover is pretty amusing, and well drawn.

This is a pretty standard issue. It's nothing special, but it's an entertaining little slice of my favourite supernatural horror domestic comedy The Second Life of Doctor Mirage!...

The Second Life of Doctor Mirage #3 (Classic Valiant)

Valiant's supernatural horror domestic comedy series The Second Life of Dr. Mirage continues on from its stellar first story with Issue #3...

After opposing Master Darque, a malevolent necromancer, scientist and supernatural investigator Dr. Hwen Mirage was 'killed', but with the help of his wife Carmen, he was brought back from the grave, albeit as a necromantic hologram. The Mirages return home, and over the coming weeks, they struggle to adapt to their new life. Things get worse as Carmen gets more and more distraught and angry at never being able to touch her husband, and Hwen will have to further understand the lengths of his powers in order to help...

The first two issues set up this series' world and established the characters, and now, we're getting into the personal lives of the main characters after those events. Hwen and Carmen go through understandable troubles, and resolve their problems come the end of the issue, so thankfully this series is never a big mope-fest. Hell, this issue on its own never feels like a mopefest. The writing is very good here!

While dramatic at times, this issue also has some pretty funny humour. One laugh-out-loud moment to me is the first time Hwen and Carmen try to sex things up, leading to a 'Well this is is awkward' cutaway. The two tones of this series are never at odds with one another, and feel natural together.

Onto the characters. Hwen and Carmen are likeable, sympathetic, and distinct main characters (both in their personalities, and in their ethnicities). As mentioned in the summary, Hwen further discovers the extent of his powers here, and to say more would be a spoiler. This issue introduces Rico, who's a main character from now on. He's pretty entertaining. Not deep or anything, but he's a likeable character.

The series villain Master Darque continues to be a meh character, which is a fault of other Valiant series Shadowman (wherein Darque is the main antagonist), rather than Second Life. He gets one weird scene at the issue's start, when he encounters the Mirages' in the airport, and after saying that they'll be fair game eventually but are of little concern for the time being, he tells them his plans! He's not even telling them about them to boast about a plan to kill the couple or anything! He's just randomly telling them his weekly schedule!

As I said in my previous Second Life review, I can totally envision this series as a movie! Issues #1 and #2 would make up the first act, with the set-up of the characters, Dr. Mirage becoming a phantom, and the battle for survival in the Tibetan wilderness, and this issue would cover the second act.

The artwork is very good, as usual, although there are a couple of moments at the start where Carmen's legs are drawn way longer then they should be. One cool stylish choice in this issue is a cutaway to Darque, where the normally white page bordering is now black! It nicely adds to the atmosphere, buuut unfortunately the villain in question is still Darque, who's boring! This issue's cover is good, and nicely portrays what you're in for.

The Second Life of Doctor Mirage is a fantastic series, and it will always be one of my favorites!