When I first saw the copies of the somewhat recent Image comic The Beauty on the stands, I was mesmerized by its cover of a woman who appears to be ill with some very ominous sickness. Who was she? Where did she come from? How did she come to appear this ... dead? All these questions when through my mind. But alas, I got answers to some of them - if not all - after having read the first Trade Paperback issue.
Featuring a pair of detectives who may or may not be secretly into each other, a la Scully and Mulder of X-Files fame, Jeremy Haun and Jason A. Hurley's new enigmatic, sci-fi-meets-possible-apocalyptic-doom-in-form-of-a-deadly-disease comic does remind one of old TV shows from Fox network (Fringe, anyone?). Vaughn and Foster are investigating The Beauty, which is a sexually transmitted virus that gives its victims physical and cosmetic bliss, but also kills them by making their head combust internally, like a light bulb whose interior gases have expanded just a bit too much.
The artwork by Haun is clean and precise; his characters look more or less the same from page to page and from issue to issue, and that is not something that can be said of every work in the contemporary world of American comics. However, the script/story here is a bit flat: it's simply overwritten, featuring too many characters whose motivations and intentions remain unclear. I couldn't help but wonder if the appearance of a mysterious "villain", Mr. Calaveras, - who resembles Red Skull of Captain America universe - is simply there for show. Calaveras likes to slice and dice prostitutes he sleeps with, and also touch naked men as much as he pleases. Not only that, he has a bunch of goons who, when they get trigger happy, like to shoot up police who are on the verge of discovering a cure for The Beauty. All that aside, he really isn't very interesting at all. In other words, he's all style, no substance.
The Beauty reminds me a great deal of another Image comic that I've recently come across, Injection. Just as in that one, I found the idea here of a world threatened by a virus or some other man-made impending doom somewhat unsatisfying, especially for a comic. This medium, as diverse as it is nowadays with numerous genres and its leading heroic characters by various publishers, simply needs to be more fun. Or if it should take the serious tone, it should at the very least be engaging. Sadly, The Beauty is not quite either.
C
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