Feel The ENIGMA - A wicked series in review

Enigma was a nasty little 8 issue series from Vertigo wherein the writer takes on everything from crazed vigilantes to road trips, the meaning of life and yes, comic books.

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So, what makes this different from other series' that have been lauded as "reinventing" and "reinvigorating" the comics genre?

Several things.

First, we don't know who the so called 'hero' of this drama is. Second.... even he doesn't.

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It doesn't fit into a genre. It's not something you can take into your room, dissect with a scalpel and start naming the major portions right and left. But then, life tends to be like that sometimes.

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Okay, so enough about the big picture question for the moment. What's the story, anyway?

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Michael Smith leads a dull and gray life where he works at a Telephone Company and has sex with his girlfriend every Tuesday (honest, this revelation comes so early on..... if it seems familiar, it's because Mark Millar did that again in Wanted) and simply lives his dry little life. Meanwhile there's a murderer on the street sucking the brains out of people and leaving dead lizards behind; and there is this hero called The Enigma whom Michael Smith remembers from a comic book he used to read as a kid.

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Trouble is, now he really exists, and so do his villains (again, if this feels familiar, it's because Mark Millar did this in 1985) who are bizarre themselves as well as in their motives. Cults have formed around The Enigma and the writer of the original series, Titus Bird, is on the run, until Michael catches up with him. Both of them attempt to solve the mystery of who actually is The Enigma.

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While it seems and sounds like an easy read, a lot of themes are explored on the way, which make these comics far more relevant. For an example, I present this panel (on the topic of Relevance itself) from the pages of the original Enigma comic read by Michael Smith as a kid and written by Titus Bird (the comic within the comic, if you please).

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Eight issues ladies and gentlemen, eight issues of mindblowing mindblowage. The biggest mystery is who the narrator of this piece is, which is of course revealed in the last panel of the last book, but its not that much of a reveal unless you've read the whole thing.

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Highly recommended, gentlemen! Look for this series (it's out of print). Write to DC to bring this back in print, I know a lot of people out there who should be reading this, and now I guess, so do you.

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