Ok, the next Unknown series? That series might be okay, because Catherine whatever-her-name-is is going to be all messed up with the brain tumor and seeing wacky stuff all the time. It might make the mysteries interesting, but Waid’s steady reliance on Heaven and Hell for all answers certainly isn’t making the series engaging.

He answers maybe one question here, how did Catherine come back to life. But he raises a lot more questions and speeds through them (I’m still not clear on how Doyle got resurrected) to get to his ending, which is the setup for the next series.

Waid doesn’t seem to have much of an idea of where the series is going and he’s now eight issues into it. Instead of doing a comic version of Moonlighting or Remington Steele, he’s doing some lame TV pilot for a fundamentalist Christian pay cable station.

Eh.

It must be nice being the editor-in-chief at the company where you write comics, because then you can get away with a silly issue like this one. It’s not bad–I mean, it’s bad, but it’s not really bad–it’s not stupid, for instance, it’s just poorly handled.

Waid puts the surprise ending in the third issue instead of the fourth, then he has this strange return of a character in a manner not making any sense. He explains it and I guess it gets the reader through the twenty pages of story, but I’m sitting here now and I can’t, for the life of me, figure out how the heck it makes an iota of sense. More, it seemingly contradicts certain elements of the first series.

The big religious reveal hasn’t happened yet. I think the lack of sincerity (Waid’s not a fundie) bugs me a bit.

Ugh. Okay, on the good side, Waid seems like he’s going to leave Doyle dead (which brings up the further question–why did Waid bother creating the character to kill him on his fifth issue, it’s kind of like what’s her face in The Dark Knight). Additionally, Allingham’s a lot less obnoxious when she’s not all-knowing. But the new assistant as the double agent thing, it’s a disaster.

Apparently, the serial killer they were after has the money and connections to have a busty female sidekick who can transport people to Italy and distract them so the serial killer can continue his work. It all has to do with the little boy in town, no doubt, who apparently has a “Twilight Zone” power–the entire town is in his imagination (wasn’t that reveal a Star Trek episode too?).

Still, a lot better than Waid’s last attempt with this one.

No way, Waid came up with a genuinely compelling mystery? The setting is lame (Italy?) but the way it plays out is like a solid film noir, even if the art’s still problematic. Oosterveer seems to have improved at the beginning, but it’s not long before he’s drawing Doyle like Gorilla Grodd’s albino twin brother again. Then the women show up and it’s all cleavage, all the time.

But the story’s definitely better this time–until it inevitably turns into some religious nonsense, which probably will happen in the third issue.

Waid’s too determined to globe trot with these characters, who could be interesting, but only in a confined setting. Sherlock Holmes never went to Morocco.

Also, Waid seems uncomfortable to put Allingham in any gender-based physical danger, but such a situation would tell a lot about the character. But character certainly isn’t the point of his writing here.