Digitally Speaking...31 "The Dead"

via James Maddox

The Dead #1

From 2014.

Just as most of the comics anyone knows feature the central gimmick of superheroes, most of the rest try to feature their own gimmick.  And with most of them, you can see the little wheels turning in the heads of the creators, trying to come up with a unique gimmick.  Which means, very often, those little wheels are squeaking.  They need some oil.  

Which is to say, the gimmick comes off like a gimmick.  Such is the case with The Dead, an afterlife series about a conception of Heaven that's not particularly religious although it does toss some standard concepts around.  Instead, and I guess I haven't always appreciated this, there's some fairly competent creating going on here.  The art is fine.  The writing is fine.  Given a tossup of the two, I'd choose the art of Jen Hickman over the writing of James Maddox.

Maddox chose a gimmick on top of a gimmick, and is so eager to get to the second gimmick he kind of glosses over the first one.  There's no need for me to talk about the main character, for instance, because he's lost in the mad dash for gimmicks.  And by the way, I'm not saying "gimmick" in an inherently negative way.  But when handled poorly, surely it must be inflected that way, yes?

Everyone gets their own personalized "rooms" in Heaven, their starting points.  The main character in The Dead doesn't get that.  Either Maddox didn't really explain why in the first issue, or I lost a sufficient amount of interest that it didn't end up making a difference one way or another.

And look, when I criticize something, I try and explain why it didn't work for me.  In the case of The Dead, it's because in his rush to be unique, Maddox obscured his intentions.  I always like to say, make sure you know your concept better than your reader.  It doesn't matter how many readers end up actually getting it.  The ones who do will love you for it.  And that's the name of the game, isn't it?  People got Superman.  And now there are superheroes everywhere.  Just like everyone gets the idea of the afterlife.  But you've got to make sure your version has clarity.  Not just magic bottles of alcohol.

Unless that's your thing.  In that instance, The Dead is perhaps a bootlegger's fever dream.  For the rest of us, The Dead is an experiment that will hopefully lead its creators to better things.