Demo Vol. 2 #1
Written by Brian Wood
Art by Becky Cloonan
DC/Vertigo
Price: $2.99 Release date: February 3, 2010

I generally like Brian Wood‘s writing, I generally like Beck Cloonan‘s art, and I generally enjoyed the first series of Demo stories that the two creators released a few years ago, so I was looking forward to the new volume of stories.

Unfortunately, I was not blown away by this particular issue. If you’ve never heard of Demo before, the basic pitch is that the stories are about normal young people who discover they have super-powers. Volume 2 Issue #1 deals with a young woman who thinks she may be able to see into the future through her dreams, and decides she has to try to save someone she saw in one of her visions.

One of the things that made the first series stand out was that while the stories may have super-powered elements in them, they were really about the characters in those stories. One problem with this issue is that there wasn’t much effort put into making the reader care about the main character.

Another problem is that there is a fairly obvious plot twist that happens at the end, and anyone who has ever seen a movie or TV show dealing with people who can see the future will know what is going to happen 15 pages before the end. In the end, we’re left with a fairly shallow story that left me fairly cold.

What didn’t leave me cold was Cloonan’s art, which is as good as ever, and has evolved since the last time I saw it. In the first series, Cloonan would subtly change her style with each issue, and she does the same thing here. The art is unmistakably hers, but she has changed the way she draws faces. It is very similar to the style that Ryan Kelly used in Local, which is appropriate since this issue is focused on a singular location.

So, even though this issue wasn’t as good as I had hoped it would be, the art is still very good, and I will check out the next issue. If you’ve never read the first series, I highly recommend you pick that up at some point.

Rating: 3 out of 5