From: rawdon@colby.cs.wisc.edu (Michael Rawdon)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.comics.misc
Subject: Grade Report: Enigma #1
Date: 23 Jan 93 01:13:20 GMT
Reply-To: rawdon@colby.cs.wisc.edu
Organization: University of Wisconsin Computer Sciences Dept., Madison, WI

Spoilers for Enigma #1...

Gee, haven't I read this somewhere before?

Well, maybe not, but it sure SEEMS like I've read it before.  On the whole, I
was very disappointed with Enigma #1, since it came off to me like just
another collection of random weirdness, as seems to be in vogue in comic book
horror these days.

We have some random individual - Michael Smith, who happens to be extremely
compulsive - who gets mixed up with a supernatural entity named The Head, who
goes about killing people and sucking their brains out.  This has something to
do with a dead lizard the Head owned back when he was human, which he found
outside a farm in Arizona where some incident (a murder?) occurred.  Then
there's this masked person roaming about who doesn't seem connected to the
story.

We're also treated to the usual assortment of casually-tossed-out impossible
actions, such as an individual creating "a new language, a new grammar, eight
cases and five genders.  This passes twenty minutes."  Once, this kind of
avant-garde randomness might have been clever, but since it's been done to
death by Grant Morrison in Doom Patrol, it leaves one feeling empty, cheated.

Which is, on the whole, how I felt about this whole issue.  An exercise in
randomness, without any seeming purpose.  A lot like Doom Patrol, actually.

Now, this is, of course, the first issue of an eight-part story, so there's a
lot which could be explained.  But regardless of the title, I'm just not drawn
into a story which offers NOTHING but mysteries in its first issue, and
mysteries by the dozen, at that, with no point of reference for me to
understand why I should CARE about any of this.

Duncan Fegredo's artwork didn't really grab me, either.  The inking seemed
extremely messy, and many panels didn't make clear to me what exactly was
going on.  The emotions and expressions of the characters often didn't match
what SEEMED to be happening.  (For instance, Sandra's face on page 9, panel
6.)  The nice color art worked hard to hold it all together, and the layouts
and storytelling were generally strong, but the details and renderings just
lacked cohesiveness.

Maybe it will improve in the future issues, but from this first issue, there's
nothing here to recommend.  Well, unless you like nice color art.

-- 
Michael Rawdon				  rawdon@colby.cs.wisc.edu
University of Wisconsin Computer Sciences Department,  Madison, WI

"Childbirth is NOT a miracle.  Life is NOT sacred.  When you have twenty
 thousand nomads huddled between two rivers in the Middle East and that's it
 for Homo sapiens, when one in five children is a live birth, one in ten
 living past the age of ten, THEN childbirth IS a miracle and life IS sacred.
 When the average age of a grandmother in Philadelphia's housing projects is
 twenty-five, to call childbirth a miracle is at least a tasteless joke and at
 worst a true obscenity."
				- Dave Sim, from Cerebus #142
Newsgroups: rec.arts.comics.misc