From Paul Tobin (“Colder”) and Alberto J. Alburquerque (“Letter 44”) comes a new adventure comic about a detective who already knows everything. It’s a story that deals with a lot of things familiar to the mainstream comics scene, and it’s ultimate challenge lies in being expressive enough to stand up on its own.
Written by Paul Tobin
Illustrated by Alberto J. Albuquerque and Marissa LouiseTrine Hampstead knows everything. Ask her a question like “Where are my keys?” or “Is he cheating on me?” or “How are there perfectly preserved mammoths in recent ice?” and she just knows. She’s the Mystery Girl. The only thing Trine doesn’t know is how she knows-or anything else from the last ten years of her life.
Adventures involving superpowered people are a touchstone of American comic books. Characters who have the ability to do one thing or another often make for enticing reading material, and often times, creators turn in stories that are loads of fun. But, with so many superpowered peeps running around, what they can do isn’t as important is how those creating their stories are able to present it, especially those with the freedom of working on their own material and not the corporately owned properties.
“Mystery Girl” #1 by Paul Tobin and Alberto Alburquerque focuses on Trine Hampstead, a street detective in London. After an encounter with a mysterious woman at a party, Trine suddenly finds herself with the ability to know everything, except for how she knows everything. She spends most of her day helping people find lost objects, and she seems contented with her life, even if it has become sort of stagnant. That is, until this woman asks her about a perfectly preserved woolly mammoth some explorers reportedly found in Siberia, and the spirit of adventure kicks in. Meanwhile, a mysterious, shady figure wanders around, shooting people and getting some like weird pleasure out of it.
The script comes off roughly in some segments, and I don’t think this first issue is indicative of what the rest of the series is going to be. (You see that mostly in the cutaway scenes, with giant woolly mammoths frozen in ice and people running desperately for their lives.) Paul Tobin offers up a fairly basic start to Trine’s adventure: not a lot of stuff happens in the story, but we do get a picture of the way Trine runs her life and with whom she surrounds herself, and that does make for someone you care about following. However, he has pretty much every single character she encounters talk about her abilities and that gets redundant and repetitive rather quickly. I’m not sure if he was trying to boost up the page count or just wasn’t sure how to go on to the next scene.
For as decently as he introduces Trine, he falters with his villain. The dude is vaudevillian evil, complete with twirling mustaches and long monologues as he towers over the deceased. It seems like his character’s terror should come from his imposing stature, but artist Alberto Albuquerque doesn’t entirely capture that, and his monologues are lazy rather than chilling.
At worst, “Mystery Girl” #1 reads like Paul Tobin and Alberto Albuquerque haven’t quite figured out their collaborative relationship yet. Tobin has turned in some cool work, especially with Coleen Coover on “Adventure Time: The Flip Side” and “Bandette,” but this issue feels more like he and Alburquerque are testing the waters, trying to figure out what sticks and what doesn’t before launching into the bigger piece.
Alburquerque’s art has the same sort of blocky faces and jittery figures you see in David Rubín’s work, so maybe that’s a popular aesthetic in Spain or something? It’s not bad looking and it reads easy enough, which is the most important thing comic art should strive for, and I appreciated how he had people constantly doing something in the background, so that constant action helps make London feel more lively and authentic, but he’s ultimately not given a lot to do. This is an issue that needs to rely more on expressions and gestures: there’s a lot of story setup and a lot of character introduction, and while Alburquerque turns in some nice work with body language, the characters’ emotions didn’t entirely convey anything. Apart from Trine, they remain kind of flat.
There’s a lot of potential for the series though, and those brief flashbacks are definitely some of the shining moments in the story and one of the elements most expressive of Tobin and Alburquerque. There are a couple character moments that do feel real and honest, like when Trine’s telling her sort-of-but-not-really boyfriend what she’s planning to do. Even though the book was a lot of setup and introductions, and repeats a lot of information, it never comes off as boring. Once Paul Tobin and Alberto Alburquerque settle into their groove, “Mystery Girl” could, at the very least, be a lot of fun
Final Verdict: 6.0 – “Mystery Girl” #1 features two creators testing the water, but nevertheless offers up a handful of fun moments.
