By Mark Waid (creator/writer), Minck Oosterveer (art)
The Story: World’s greatest detective Catherine Allingham has only six months to live. Before that happens she’s intent on solving the greatest mystery of all: what happens after we die? Her latest case brings her and new partner Adriana to a small Southern town where the murder victims have left seemingly unrelated final messages. The thing is, unbeknownst to Catherine, she’s been here once before, investigating the same case. Why can’t she remember? And who is Adriana working for really?
What’s Good: Waid has managed not only to keep my attention with this second installment in his quirky supernatural mystery, but has also achieved a quite unlikely feat with this series as a whole so far: he’s made a sequel which is far better than the original. In preparation for my review of this issue, I read the first miniseries by the same creative team so that I’d be better prepared to give it a fair shake. Despite some fairly interesting ideas and a good hook when it came to the protagonist (“What if Sherlock Holmes were dying and prone to hallucinate?”), the story left me cold. There was just too much going on all at once for me to care about any one thing. The plot also seemed to be trying too hard to impress with its mad ideas, yet never found the time to fill in some of the blanks. The Devil Made Flesh, however, has none of these problems, as this second issue continues to prove.
Waid grabs a hold of the reader’s attention immediately on the first page, while also setting the tone for the series as a whole. Not everything is as it seems to be in this story, and the opening scene serves to remind readers of this fact. The writer also gets kudos for addressing an obvious question about our heroine’s medical problem in a subtle way. The fact that he does so while not only revealing a new layer to her character, but also teaching me an interesting little anecdote about Freddy Mercury is downright genius. It’s moments like these that remind you that Waid deserves all of the accolades that he’s received over the course of his long career. In addition, he takes what could be a tired horror trope (the spooky, near-empty small town hiding a terrible secret) and makes it feel fresh. Most of the credit for this has to do with experiencing the events through dying detective Catherine Allingham. Waid has given us a wonderful set of eyes to see the world through here. Both tragic and clever, she manages to be not only someone we’d want to meet, but someone we can sympathize with. Everyone wants to know if there’s something more out there, and Catherine is no different.
This is my first exposure to Minck Oosterveer’s artwork. I like it. I couldn’t help but be reminded of David Lapham’s pencils as I read this issue, and as Lapham is a favorite of mine, that’s a good thing. Oosterveer knows how to solidly tell a story. His style also is well-suited to the subject matter. He seems equally at home with the Noir-ish aspects of the tale as well as with the gorier, more horror-themed scenes. In particular, his simple design of Catherine stands out as being both iconic and believable.
What’s Not So Good: I have to admit, despite Oosterveer’s work being solid in almost every way, he sure does seem preoccupied with making the females in the comic overtly sexy. Both leads are curvy ladies who have no compunctions about showing as much of their assets as possible. Catherine wears a tank top that seems to have been unbuttoned with the express purpose of revealing her cleavage and Adriana is dressed, quite frankly, like a prostitute. When she actually says the phrase, “I’m more than boobs,” while wearing a skin-tight mini-dress that leaves nothing to the imagination, I couldn’t help but laugh at the absurdity. If their clothing choices told me something about their characters, I could understand. However, that doesn’t seem to be the case. If anything, it only serves to tell me something about the artist, which distracts from an otherwise strong comic book.
Conclusion: Waid and Oosterveer’s sophomore chapter of their latest The Unknown miniseries doesn’t fail to entertain. A fascinating heroine, a creepy and well-written mystery, and generally solid story-telling in the artwork all add up to a comic book well worth your time.
Grade: B
-Joe Lopez
Filed under: Boom! Studios Tagged: | Boom! Studios, Mark Waid, Mike Oosterveer, The Unknown: The Devil Made Flesh, The Unknown: The Devil Made Flesh #2, The Unknown: The Devil Made Flesh #2 review
