Resurrection Man #2 – Review

By: Dan Abnett & Andy Lanning (writers), Fernando Dagnino (artist), Santi Arcas (colorist)

The Story: Getting chased by two hot ladies sounds pretty great in theory, and yet…

The Review: We don’t know too much about Mitch Shelley, the Resurrection Man, but in his defense, he doesn’t know too much about himself either.  It’s not the most unusual twist in the world when a comic book character knows more about his superpowers than his own past, but at least you’re never in want for mystery.  That said, the writers must take on the responsibility of keeping you interested if they want to keep you out of the loop.

One way to do that is to create a character who engages you with his personality alone, if not his background.  So far, you can’t say Mitch does much of that.  While not unlikable in any way, he just seems too buttoned-up and straight-laced to get very attached to his character.  At times, he becomes a cipher in his own comic, acting as instrument to deliver or acquire more information for us, but not actually doing much in particular.

The most we get to see of Mitch’s humanness (so to speak) is in the way he deals with Mr. Roth, a co-resident at the residential care home where Mitch’s dad spent his last days.  These scenes play very well, but mostly because Mr. Roth himself has such a lively personality of his own, being old-school bananas: “I was a super-villain.  Professional.  High tech end of the market.  They called me the Transhuman.  Maybe you heard of me?”  Mitch: “Ooo-kay.”

At least we glean a few interesting tidbits about Mitch’s past.  We learn he, like his father, was a scientist.  We know he used to work in corporate research, with ties to the government.  We also know that Mitch might have been something of a cold workaholic (Mr. Roth says, grinning, “You didn’t much give me the time of day, then, I recall.”).  From that we can take a few guesses as to a possible source of Mitch’s powers, but we don’t gain much more than that.