Review: THE ANSWER! #2

THE ANSWER! #2
DARK HORSE COMICS – @DarkHorseComics

STORY: Dennis Hopeless and Mike Norton
SCRIPT: Dennis Hopeless
ART/COVER: Mike Norton
COLORS: Mark Englert
LETTERS: Crank!
28pp, Color, $3.99 U.S.

Part 2 of 4

We’re still waiting for The Answer! The Answer! is a four-issue comic book miniseries created by writer Dennis Hopeless and artist Mike Norton. Norton is the creator of the Eisner Award-winning web comic, Battlepug, and Hopeless is a writer for Marvel Comics (Avengers Arena). The series focuses on Devin McKenzie, a research librarian, and The Answer!, an odd, masked crime fighter with a giant exclamation point on his face mask.

As The Answer! #2 opens, Devin McKenzie has been on the run with The Answer! ever since he broke into Newberry Library, the research library where she worked. Now, the mismatched pair faces off against a small army of brawny men dressed in medical scrubs. While the hero fights off the muscular brutes, a mysterious trio absconds with Devin. The three strangers claim to be from an organization and quasi-secret society called the Brain Trust, and they say they want Devin’s smarts.

The novelty of The Answer! being different from other superhero comics has slightly worn off for me. The series is, at this point, still hiding too many things. This goes beyond “the mystery deepens” and has just become withholding-info-just-to-be-cute. Still, The Answer! makes me think of the 1980s ABC romantic-comedy and crime series, Moonlighting, so I’m ready to read #3.

B

Reviewed by Leroy Douresseaux