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Unique #1
Book Released: 28 Mar 2007
Posted 16 Apr 2007
Writer: Dean Motter
Artist: Dennis Calero
Letters: Scott O. Brown
Colors: Dennis Calero
Publisher: Platinum Studios Comics
2.50 out of 5 Stars
Reviewed by Matt Yocum
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I really tried to like this comic. I wanted to like this comic.
But when I put it down, I found myself anxiously picking something
else from my stash, hoping to find the magic that was missing from
Unique.
Unique #1 is 48 pages of glossy paper comic sold at the
standard comic book price of $2.99. While it may seem like a
deal, the entire story could have been told in a third as many pages.
Unfortunately Dean Motter left me wanting less, not more.
The entire story is standard genre fare that you’ve read
before (e.g., in Marvel’s Exiles and dozens of other
titles, past or present). We learn that Jon Geoffries is unique. Jon
discovers there is only one of himself among the infinite number of
“I wonder if, in an alternate reality, there is a writer coming
up with a story just like this, however in their version of an
alternate earth the people go out during the day and sleep at
night.”
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alternate earths, allowing he and a few other uniques the sole ability
to dimension-hop. On the alternate earth where he learns this,
the entire populace has taken to spending their waking hours in the
night, sleeping through the day, the opposite of our diurnal world and
leading Jon to almost get a day-time curfew ticket from that
earth’s constabulary. It’s not explained how the people
from this earth suppress the body’s natural production of
melatonin which is manufactured when even the tiniest degree of light
hits our visual receptors, thus naturally waking us up. Perhaps
eye-shade conglomerates rule this world.
You see Unique has reduced me to such mental wanderings
because the story took such a long time going nowhere. Jon is an
accountant who discovers a corporate cover-up within his company,
upon which his bosses dispatch their heavy hands to “deal with
him.” This plot, which could span a few pages, possibly a few
panels, is forced upon the reader page after page, often with such
detailed descriptions of accounting that it had me wondering if this
was a scholastic tutorial.
The one redeeming element of this, and the reason it achieved a
rating above a 2, is the stylized art of Dennis Calero. Mr. Calero
handled all the artistic duties, including coloring, and he makes
even the most simple settings interesting to look at. I just wish the
writer had given him more interesting material than, in one case,
several pages of an accounting conversation in Jon’s work
cubicle.
Unique proves to be a boring comic with pretty pictures.
I’d like to see Calero with better material, and I hope
Unique stretches out in territory not already mined countless
times. I wonder if, in an alternate reality, there is a writer coming
up with a story just like this, however in their version of an
alternate earth the people go out during the day and sleep at night.
I guess it would be much like this — the same old story trying
to look like something new. There’s nothing unique about this.
Comments about my comments? Feel free to email me at myocum@comiccritique.com.
—CCdC—
Cover image used without explicit permission in accordance with the "Fair Use" provision of US copyright law.
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