Review - Doctor Voodoo #s 4 & 5

The Unreal has taken over the world with a little help from Nightmare, Doctor Voodoo's brother, Daniel, is no longer a brother, having possessed Damon Hellstrom. All the mages in the world seem to have gone to Nightmare's side.
Daniel must free his brother then the world from Nightmare's spell.


REVIEW:

I found it relatively hard to follow what was going on here; I had jumped in in the middle of the story, and while I picked up what had gone before, it felt muddy and murky. Part of that was needing far more backstory than I knew - and I actually read the 'previously' panels (I liked them being carved in stone) for once.

Part of that was the artwork; not particularly bad, but not whizbang fantastico, either. The colouring palette was very dark and favoured earthy tones; it's a common colour scheme these days, but I find it difficult to get emotionally connected to comics that use it.

The writing was okay, but at one point used too many unfamiliar words in too short a space; that's something that needs to be treated far more carefully than it is.

It contained Sandman references, for those who care; I think of Nightmare as the MU analogue, but the line I like is "What you see is your desire, Daniel. Your dream." (Desire, Daniel, and Dream each being members of the Endless.) Okay, they could be coincidence, but I like them better as Deliberate*.

(* Deliberate is not a member of the Endless.)

I liked the lampshading of Brother Voodoo and Doctor Strange having pretty much the same origin, elements of which Shaman shares.

I don't know enough about Voudon to comment on the handling of it, but they did go beyond voodoo dolls and zombies here... though those both showed up.

Da Juice :
Talisman shows up in both issues; discussion about the first led to her entry title here.
The appearance is tiny, two panels in toto, no lines. But, and this is imprtant, she's not seen to die. Despite the current trend, no Alphans were harmed in this issue - and many of the mages of the MU did die in this (technically alternate) reality; including Swampmanthing, Wiccan, Dracula... so, yay to that!