Khalid further explores his powers.
Creative Staff:
Story: Paul Levitz
Art: Sonny Liew
Colors:Lee Loughridge
What They Say:
Khalid’s quest for answers leads the young Doctor Fate to his ancestral homeland of Egypt, where he discovers that malevolent supernatural forces have conspired to make life a lot harder for humanity than it should be.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
Doctor Fate has had a solid run so far even if the opening storyline was far too decompressed for my tastes as a whole. I’ve loved reconnecting with the concept of the character being brought into the modern in an engaging way, particularly through the use of Khalid and all the trappings that come from him. As we’ve seen with the past characters that have taken on the mantle of Fate, each brings their own worldview and experiences to it while being tied to what has come from the past. That shapes the book in some engaging ways and can challenge the reader with what they expect since it isn’t usually the same old superhero material in a sense. Combine it with someone like Khalid with his youth and inexperience and it can become dangerous.
Which is largely the takeaway I got from this chapter. With Khalid having gone to New York City in order to find Akila as she’s caught up in the protest movement, he’s using his abilities to try and find her while also trying to tamp down on the protest itself before it gets out of control – on both sides. It’s an honest enough take considering the way that it’s unfolding, but as Khalid worries about how he’d be perceived since some of his possible actions could label him as a supervillain, he ends up essentially doing just that. From tossing a group of cops into the river – hoping their shots are up to date – to flooding part of the city streets to get the protesters to cool down, everything he does has a very authoritarian tone to it. He is, as we know from the narration, doing what he thinks is right to try and ease the pressure of the protest. But he’s mostly just doing it by a might is right mentality while exploring what his powers can do.
Even worse is when he does find Akila, she’s been taken to a precinct to be booked and he tries to figure out a way to break her out and proceeds to do so. There are interesting elements to what we see here as it plays into the bigger picture of the protest and some of the leaders and a spiritual/supernatural side, but the bulk of it is Khalid getting little help from Nabu in regards to his powers and therefore just doing things that make sense to a college-age kid but are pretty grim when you get down to it. I can understand why he wants to save Akila, whose name the cops couldn’t even get right, but the methods of it on top of his own views of her while going to where she is initially paints a conflicting picture. Nabu at one point tells him to not worry about labels, for he is Fate. And the view we get is that Fate with this Khalid under the helm could be someone who really takes control and could impose order in a truly authoritarian way all while believing he’s doing it for the right reasons.
In Summary:
Doctor Fate is definitely in an intriguing position here with how Khalid’s operating and I’m curious as to what the endgame with it or if it’s just my interpretation of events as they’re playing out. I really like Khalid and I can totally get his viewpoint and the why and how of what he’s doing, but I can also see so much fallout from it. This issue has Sonny Liew returning on art duties and that means another installment where I just pore over the pages and adore the design, the camera placement for the panels, and the overall sense of layout. There are a number of interesting cutout sections for Fate this time around that are neat and I love the crosscut panels that we get to see both Fate and Khalid. It’s a great book visually and a reminder of one of the strong books I’ve picked up in the last year in this department.
Grade: B
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: DC Comics via ComiXology
Release Date: February 17th, 2016
MSRP: $2.99
