Money is the modern day magic.
Creative Staff:
Story: Mark Waid
Art: Neil Edwards
What They Say:
“TV legend. Wall Street wolf. Internet mogul. Tabloid bad boy. Master metaphysicist. Spiritualist. Monster hunter. Doctor Adam Spektor is all of these things…and less.” For fifteen years, Spektor has traveled the globe to smoke out and defeat werewolves, vampires, ghosts and everything else that goes bump in the night. Yet his success has brought him no peace…some part of him is missing, something he needs but can’t name. But he’s about to find what’s missing…in an unlikely place…
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
While a good number of Gold Key properties saw relaunch in the 90’s with Valiant’s versions, there are those that didn’t become a part of it. Doctor Spektor has that as both a positive and a negative. With the original creation, a twenty-four issue series from four decades ago, being the only interpretation, the team of Mark Waid and Neil Edwards aren’t held back by a lengthy history or a significant fanbase to contend with. But that also means there’s no huge rallying cry to draw attention to the title either. What it has to work with is what this team brings to the table as you have to largely treat it as an original property, particularly since the team is modernizing it and going with their own approach. What helps to make it accessible in a way is that Dynamite has done so well so far with the other Gold Key properties that you want to see what someone like Mark Waid is capable of with it.
The series revolves around a wealthy man named Adam Spektor who is, interestingly enough, a reality TV man who has a show that basically goes around the world eliminating the various supernatural evils that are out there. He’s been doing this for some time and has achieved a good bit of fame by doing it as he’s taken down some big things along the way, but it’s hard to tell just how the world views him. Is it really? Or is it just creative fake reality TV? The reader knows its reals, as we see what he has to deal with in the opening pages with a fairly powerful vampire named Rackenham, but there’s a disconnect in just how it’s treated in the larger view. Spektor ties in what he does to losses in the real world as we see about a child and another woman ended up being victims of Rackenham, so it creates a sort of justice to what he does. It’s a creative approach to things and we see that it definitely takes a toll on Spektor as well as the episode concludes.
For Spektor, he definitely plays the occultist well in look and personality with a dash of modern showmanship, but what we also see is that he uses modern technology well to do what’s needed. A bit elaborate in some ways as we see an entire satellite devoted to dealing with the vampire, but that helps to reinforce his wealth. And that’s going to come into play more as you can see him acquiring or inventing the tools needed to deal with the threats that are older than dirt. Where the opening issue attempts to humanize things is with the introduction halfway through with Abby, Adam’s new personal assistant at Spektor Research. She views it as a kind of normal assistant job, but she’s hired more to take care of him, to keep him on the straight and narrow as the work he does takes a whole lot out of him. She has to grapple with the weirdness of the job, but she also provides an outsiders view into the well oiled machine that Spektor has built over the last several years.
There’s some interesting psychological exploration that comes into this as it Abby starts to see the real man behind the personality and the demons that truly haunt him. There’s things in him that he’s trying to cope with and to destroy before it destroys him and when you combine that with his showman side, the media personality aspect and the kinds of things that fame feeds, you can see just how destructive it can be. That thing that haunts him is just a wisp at the the moment, but the edges of that we see definitely gives us something tangible to latch onto that you can understand drives him.
This opening issue does a good job for the first three fourths of it as we get the exploration of the showman, the more personal side and some of the business. But when it shifts to the next piece where he’s dealing with exposing a charlatan of a spiritualist who claims to talk with the dead, it kind of goes off the rails a bit. In a way, it feels like it goes big in an awkward way, particularly since it ties itself ever so briefly with the other Gold Key titles, and we get a workplace related death and a quick twist and turn to a new ghost that’s now hanging around a bit. The last five pages or so just feel so chaotic, so quick in cut and tone, that it left me spinning and re-reading a couple of times to make sure I really caught the flow of it. It’s all designed to propel Spektor forward, but it felt like it undercut some of what came before. It does offer some tantalizing things though and continues to give us a good anchor with Abby – providing she lives for awhile.
In Summary:
I’ve long enjoyed Mark Waid’s writing and he looks to be having a lot of fun with this title right from the get go, and that can be infectious. With a couple of reads, you see a lot of what’s going on here and the potential and there’s a lot to like, though those last pages left me feeling rushed no matter how many times I read it. Working with the occult side within the Gold Key are is definitely a good place to settle in with and they’ve come up with an interesting idea to work with in how he’s a TV celebrity and all that entails. If it gets fleshed out and plays a strong enough role, it’ll definitely set itself apart from a lot of other titles. It also helps that Waid gets to work with Neil Edwards as his sense of style, layout and character design here is spot on. There’s a lot to like with the flow of it throughout the issue and with the way we get to see the characters so he has me hoping to see some great stuff down the road, especially if we get some really unconventional occult stuff to deal with rather than the basic vampires and ghosts.
Grade: B
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: Dynamite Entertainment
Release Date: May 28th, 2014
MSRP: $3.99