Reality is what we make of it anyway.
Creative Staff:
Story: Mark Waid
Art: Neil Edwards
What They Say:
Nothing makes sense…everything that Doctor Spektor has ever known is called into question, and he’ll stop at nothing to uncover the secrets and lies that hide beneath the surface of reality. Can the Master Of The Occult overcome his fears, and learn the unfathomable secrets of the universe?
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
The opening installment of Doctor Spektor largely worked well for me as it introduced us to the lesser known Gold Key character and brought it into the present pretty well. It was a bit hectic in general and had a lot going on, but it was trying to cover a lot of ground and did just that. If it had a fault it was that those last few pages just felt rushed in terms of pacing and it left me cringing a bit with the forced nature of seeing other Gold Key characters in there. I’m still not 100% keen on them interacting in some way, but that’s not a surprising avenue for Dynamite to take with the characters. With this issue, things slow down a bit but go for a confusing angle (that does make sense) before it once again throws the larger narrative at us for a bit, which does the right job of making you curious about what it all really means and wanting more. While I had hoped for a bit more substance and meaty material here, the big picture has a potential edge coming into view.
Taking place relatively soon after what Spektor calls The Experience of what happened that had them seeing into another dimension and the death of Lenny, neither Spektor nor Abby are handling things well. Spektor’s trying to move things forward with the company himself in order to pursue the things he wants to figure out from what he saw while Abby is just trying to process it all. For her, she’s still very much sticking to the job since Lenny had asked her to watch over Spektor in the time to come. That’s finally revealed for him and it makes him a bit interested and wary at the same time, but it at least explains why she’s still there after all the crazy stuff and Lenny’s death. When a ghost suggests something like that, well, it may be a safe bet to go along with it at least for a little bit.
With that kind of element handled, the book takes a standard approach of telling a story in the present and a story an hour earlier where Spektor sends Abby off to find a Devil Claw Root to deal with some sort of issue he’s having. She ends up going to the place he told her not to go and what we see is that reality split along the way and both of them are in vastly different places, unable to connect back to each other but having a connection that has brought them there. While it plays to a standard story idea, I’m sure most readers of any genre has seen this before, it does it well because of the different realities from what they had expected and the time effect as well that’s looped back upon. But it also does the same thing in a way as the first issue as towards the end, seeing Spektor working with his larger and secretive group of scientists, makes that connection to some other side and we get Magnus barreling through to end Spektor since he’s claiming the end of the world will happen. It’s brunt, physical and definitely making an impact but it also really does leave you sitting there reading it wanting more. I’m thoroughly enjoying the Magnus book but I have no clue how this will really connect – if it truly connects. But now I really want to see.
In Summary:
While it was kind of messy and chaotic in its own way, I rather enjoyed the opening issue of Doctor Spektor, especially since I had no real connection to the original and it was open as to what it could be. This issue takes a lot of what happened there and focuses on moving forward, but it has some good connective moments that keeps you touching upon all of it. Lenny has a small but critical role, Spektor’s bigger ambitions slowly start to take shape as does his abilities and we see the reasons why both he and Abby are operating as they are after having The Experience. There’s a lot of potential with what’s here and while I’m wary of its connection with a book as vastly different as Magnus: Robot Fighter, I’m definitely interested to see how it all comes together, even if part of me would rather have this book stand alone for awhile on its own.
Grade: B
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: Dynamite Entertainment
Release Date: July 2nd, 2014
MSRP: $3.99
