Twilight Obsession

 

Twilight Guardian #1

This is the weirdest comic I’ve read in a while.

I picked it up because I recognized Troy Hickman’s name and had been pretty pleased with the stuff I’d seen of his previously, and because I was in the mood to pick up something new and different. It’s part of Top Cow Productions’ “Pilot Season” promotion, where six new series are introduced, and the two that get the most votes from readers will get a new ongoing series next year.

The story focuses on the Twilight Guardian, a young woman in a hoodie and domino mask who patrols “a nine block area between Sandusky Avenue and Aurora Drive.” She doesn’t have powers, and there’s no real crime in her surburban neightborhood. Why does she do this every night? No idea. She’s broken somewhere, mentally, and somehow, it helps her to obsess over being a vigilante. And she is obsessed — she’s thinks out every last bit of her crusade, from the perfect crimefighting uniform, to the roll of quarters and ninja climbing claws she carries but never needs, to the comics she reads before going on patrol, to the homemade jerky she takes along to placate angry dogs.

So what happens? Nothing happens. She goes on patrol night after night, and nothing ever happens. I mean, nothing comic-booky happens. There’s no alien invasion, no supervillains, no natural disasters, no bank robberies. She goes on patrol, watches people in her neighborhood, encounters a lot of different black cats who want her beef jerky, and thinks about the importance of her “mission.”

And I think I like it. I don’t know that it’d be possible to sustain an ongoing series of this, but it’s a fascinating character study. I doubt she’d fare very well if she ever ran into a real crisis or a supervillain — she has to screw up her courage even to tell loiterers to move along — but I’d love to see how she came to this point in her life, and if she ever manages to come to grips with whatever drives her to pretend to be a vigilante.

Verdict: Thumbs up.