Leroy Douresseaux Reviews: BAD MEDICINE #1

BAD MEDICINE #1
ONI PRESS

WRITERS: Nunzio DeFilippis and Christina Weir
ART: Christopher Mitten
COLORS: Bill Crabtree
LETTERS: Douglas E. Sherwood
28pp, Color, $3.99 U.S.

Christina Weir and Nunzio DeFilippis form the wife and husband writing team that wrote New Mutants and New X-Men from Marvel Comics over a three-year period. The couple also wrote the crime fiction graphic novels, Skinwalker and Three Strikes.

Published by Oni Press, Bad Medicine is a new kind of crime comic written by DeFilippis and Weir and drawn by artist Christopher Mitten (Wasteland). In a an interview with the website, Comic Book Resources, Christina Weir described Bad Medicine as “a sci-fi/horror medical procedural” that focuses on a team put together by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) to “investigate strange diseases and outbreaks that science can't explain.”

Bad Medicine #1 (“Unseen” Part 1 of 2) introduces team leader, Dr. Randal Horne. The good doctor has been traveling the world to study different alternative medicines and non-western views of science. He returns to New York City to help NYPD Detective Joely Huffman unravel a strange murder case. The corpse of a man has been found in an abandoned lab, and the corpse’s head is invisible.

A new comic book series should not begin with a bang, but rather with intriguing characters. They make the bang better and louder. Bad Medicine has good characters to spare, and one of them seems to be some kind of spirit. As interesting as the “invisible head” murder is, the characters just make it all the better. Dr. Horne and Det. Huffman are a match made in crime fiction heaven, and there is even a squabbling Laurel and Hardy-like pair to add comedic flare. Weir described this as “House” meets “The X-Files.” I still love “The X-Files,” but never wanted to be bothered with “House.” Let’s try “The X-Files” meets “C.S.I.”

Readers looking for something different and good in crime comics will want a prescription for Bad Medicine.

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