Digitally Speaking...35 "Death-Defying Doctor Mirage"

via Comic Book Resources

The Death-Defying Doctor Mirage #1 (Valiant)

From 2014.

Holy crap.

Let me rephrase that: Holy crap, I love this one.  Valiant is home to a lot of wandering superheroes, Doctor Mirage among them.  It's a company specializing in trying to be an alternative to DC and Marvel, and mostly, as has been the story for decades, that's not really a winning cause.  When you're trying to be an alternative, it shows.  

Instead of trying to do its own thing and being an alternative, Death-Defying Doctor Mirage is merely doing its own thing, and yes, it shows.

In a very, very good way.  It's very reminiscent of what Warren Ellis has done in the pages of Supreme: Blue Rose, actually.  Going in, I really had no concept of who or what Doctor Mirage is supposed to be.  In this series at least, it's a woman who happens to be a medium, and she's just been recruited for the case of her life.

Jan Van Meter is a creator I previously admired in the pages of JSA All-Stars for a series of backup features.  I always hoped to catch up with her again, but I didn't expect, somehow, for the circumstances to have found her significantly improving her game like this.  It's just not usual.  Usually, someone stays comfortably at the same creative level.  Let there be no mistake here: Death-Defying Doctor Mirage is Jen Van Meter's ticket to the big time.  

It's a five-issue mini-series, by the way, that concluded earlier this year.  This is incredibly handy.  I'm going to read the rest of it.  With all these digital samples I've been reading, it's been very rare for me to actively want to keep reading.  I've liked some stuff very much that had more material waiting for me.  In this instance, I'm beyond eager to pull the trigger.