The Death-Defying Dr. Mirage #1 Review: Lost Potential

Paranormal investigating isn’t something new. It’s been around since humans knew about ghosts and has fascinated and frightened many. There has even been some fiction based around ghost hunting. One of the latest is “The Death-Defying Dr. Mirage” by Jen Van Meter with art by Roberto De La Torre.

It’s a shame that this comic is about as dead as its subjects.

The story has the titular character investigate the house of a wealthy billionaire. While there he tells her of his life, especially during World War II. However, he holds a dark secret that the doctor must fix.

The story is about as boring as it sounds. There are plenty of paranormal detective stories out there, some are even top notch. The difference between those and this comic is that this comic is not quite sure how to go about telling a compelling story. This story is more concerned with having the billionaire telling his sob story than putting any emotion into the story.

In fact, the good doctor is about as boring as can get. We know nothing about her except that she can talk to dead people and she’s a doctor. She has almost no personality, nothing that makes the reader care about her and is written more like a side character than the lead character. Say what you want about “Yu Yu Hakusho” but at least we learn who the main lead is, his background, his personality, who his rivals are and see the plot take shape in the first chapter. Here we get bite sized idea of all those and we’re left hungry.

The art isn’t all that enthralling either. Just like the story, it is bland, boring and downright unpleasant. The character designs are basic and there are some panels where the characters have this abstract style to them. This makes them look even less human and more like a failed Picasso.

“The Death-Defying Dr. Mirage #1” takes the paranormal investigator genre and sucks all like out of it. The story and the art is a bore and will cause readers to fall asleep in the middle. Wasting ten hours in a “haunted” locale only to find nothing is much more interesting than this.