Guest Review - Doc Unknown #1

   Stepping into the Guest Review chair is my good friend Lyle Tucker, who gives us a look at a title you might have missed.

   Hi! I'm an old fart who stopped reading comics regularly in 1975 or so. I am missing entire decades of Big Two continuity. 

   As such, I tend to eschew jumping onto the moving trains of such titles as The Avengers, Batman, The X-Men, etc. I don't know who half the characters are anymore, nor, more importantly, what their past 40-year history has been. In my world Gwen Stacy died just the other week – who's this Venom chap? 

   So, I seek out either new titles or those specifically geared toward the '60s/'70s versions with which I grew up.

   Oh, another thing - I'm a cheapskate. So, this idea of spending $3–5 for a single comic is odious. Bordering on the insane.

   Enter COMIXOLOGY, with its offerings of free and 99 cent digital comics. Woo-hoo!

   And, thusly, enter Doc Unknown #1, Doc Unknown in the Museum of Madness, a Comixology Submit release, just 99 cents for the digital issue. Written and created by Fabian Rangel Jr. and illustrated by Ryan Cody, the vibe I got from this first issue was something of a mix between Atomic Robo and Hellboy. 

   The story is light and frothy, as is the artwork. You're not going to be involving yourself to any great degree here, but the first issue tosses out enough comic/pulp tropes to satisfy any aging comic fan. 

   As Rangel Jr. himself points out at the end of the first story, Doc Unknown is a mash-up of everything he loves about comics. Set in Gate City at what appears to be the '40s, the first issue contains Doc Unknown taking on, with his fists and shurikens: secret societies, talking skeletons, Tommy-Gun wielding mobsters, a freakish monster crime boss (“The Snake”), a re-animated mummy, a T-Rex, a ghost and a half-human cyborg Nazi.

   And if that didn't whet yer appetite for this mag, then nothing I could say will.

   Highly recommended if you like retro fun in your comics!

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