Broken Frontier

Fighting crime after the kid’s bedtime! Midknight features David and Tarilyn D’ville, an ordinary couple who happen to defend the city when not at their day jobs.

This issue opens with the couple simply trying to take in a hockey game when duty calls. A woman gets hit in the face with a puck, and David, the doctor, decides to help her out and take her to the hospital. On the way, he happens to catch a suspicious man under a green hood out of the corner of his eye. At this point, it’s clear that his night out with his wife has come to an end.

Midknight #1 was created by Tom and Terri Hodges, several years back. The "origin" story written on the back page of this issue tells the sporadic history of Midknight and all the twists and turns it took to get where he is today. Tom has gained much of his fame through the Star Wars web-comic, Evasive Action: Reversal of Fortune. His art style is clean and very appealing to the eyes. Very sharp line work that doesn’t appear to be obscured by the inks. Helping matters greatly, is the high quality paper used for the book and the fact that Mr. Hodges colored his own work. Very beautiful stuff here!

The words come from Paul Ens, another Star Wars web-comic alum, as well as the former Director of Lucas Online. He is now the founder of Red 5 Comics, and also, from the looks of this book, quite the talented storyteller.

All that being said, it just felt like there was something missing in this book. Perfectly adequate "first issue" fare: decent action and characterization, and a cliffhanger ending to boot, but it just feels like we’ve seen this all before.

The cliffhanger in question sort of came out of nowhere, and seemingly had nothing to do with the previous 21 pages. It intrigued me, though with all the driving around my town I had to do simply to find this book, I may not be intrigued enough to seek this one out again.

The art, as I mentioned is incredibly attractive and definitely this book’s selling point. It’s very reminiscent of Michael Avon Oeming. The book’s cover is a really heavy stock, giving the book a really top of the line look. It’s funny seeing a company selling books of higher paper quality and with fewer ads for four cents cheaper than the big two.

This book is recommended if you’re able to find it, and are looking for a decent opening issue for a superhero story. There’s definitely something here, I only hope Midknight is able to find its way in the coming issues.