The Death- Defying Doctor Mirage

    The Death- Defying Doctor Mirage is the first issue out of 5 releases in the re-launched series. It was created by Jen Van Meter, Roberto De La Torre, and David Baron. Doctor Mirage can see the dead and talk to them. The only spirit that Doctor Mirage, or Shan Fong, can't talk to is her deceased husband. She uses this skill to solve homicides and is hired for a special task that gives her an opportunity to be potentially reunited with her decreased husband. The special task is to help a millionaire figure out why a demon is bonded to him.

        The paratext is very interesting on this issue. There are a couple of variant covers but I have one that is completely white with no images and just the title in the top right corner.

    This cover leaves much to be desired and I didn't have any expectations of the story when I began to read it. Normally, the paratext will give the reader ideas about what genre the story is about and set up expectations about the characters. I only had the name to base my judgments on and the name really didn't do much. The name suggested that it was going to be maybe an action comic about someone doing stunts and risking their life. The lettering of the title on the cover and the little skull drawing on top of the "i" seemed to suggest this comic to be lighthearted. I was clearly very wrong. 

    The colour palette is all dark colours such as blues, grays, and browns. There are defined lines and harsh shading. There isn't much contrast between the characters and the background in terms of colour. The characters seem to fade into the background in a few instances. This is done to have the focus on the narrative instead of the characters. The facial features of the characters are ambiguously drawn which Scott McCloud believes allows the readers to relate, but in this case, I couldn't feel more disconnected. The content is not relatable but really interesting. 

    The word balloons and thought balloons look exactly the same except that Shan's thought balloons have a slight green hue to them. This suggests that Shan's thought are "coloured" or influenced by her experiences. This is a clear indicator to the reader that Shan's thoughts are different from her speech. As well as the change in colour, there are some instances where her thoughts have a slightly different font from her speech or a different shaped balloon. Sometimes it was hard to distinguish what were word balloons or just thought bubbles. This suggests an intimate relationship with the readers since her thoughts are always available to be read and sometimes disguise themselves as word balloons.

Tamara Latinovic