Simon Dark #1 - DC

I really just picked this book up for the heck of it. I don't really know how good it'll be, but I thought I'd give it a shot. It's written by Steve Niles, who does most of his work for some other companies, but somehow, they talked him in to doing a project for DC. And it's drawn by the incomparable Scott Hampton. And that, really, is why I gave it a shot. If it was any other artist, I probably would've passed it by. But when I looked through the pages, I thought it looked pretty good. The main character, as per the title, is Simon Dark. He's kind of an urban legend in this one part of Gotham. The kids even have a song they sing about him. They think he protects them. Most of the story is told through Simon's perspective, or this woman who's the medical examiner, who's investigating the most recent murder. There also seems to be this mob family, or something, that Simon's crossing paths with. He kind of reminds me of the Ragdoll. You know, from the Secret 6. Except he's a lot more lethal. And more sinister looking. We don't really get the whole gist of the story with this first issue. We just get to see Simon in action once or twice, and we really don't find out much more than the medical examiner, Beth Grange, when she's going around asking questions. I like what we were shown the first issue. It was interesting, and it left us with enough questions to bring us back next issue. Hopefully, they don't do any cheesy crossovers with this book. Usually about the 2nd or 3rd issue they bring in the local hero, in this case Batman, to show that they're grounded in the DC universe. But . . I don't think we really need that here. Plus I really don't see how it could possibly add to the story. As long as everybody, creatively, pulls their weight . . . this looks like it could be a pretty interesting book. But, we'll just have to wait and see.