By Dustin Cabeal

I was going to open with a Cold War Kids song, but I don’t know any of their songs. Probably something melodramatic about how hard it is to be rich and famous and making music, but then the trade off to that is constant touring, so you’re not forgotten by the audience. Something like that.

The point is, I’m tired of the Cold War in comics. I’ve yet to read one that was interesting (and that includes one that hasn’t even released yet) and The Skeptics is no exception.

The plot hinges on America starting their own psychic team to combat the Russians. A Professor trains two of her students to fool the system to show that the powers thing is bullshit. That’s the opening of the comic, the students passing the test, getting lunch and giving us a little background on themselves. The latter half of the book has a twist that I won’t spoil for you because the story makes it extremely obvious. The worst part is that due to the title, you should probably wait until the next issue to buy into anything you’re seeing.

The issue itself is rather dull. In writing my recap, I realized who much I read and how little actually happened. Time moves the story forward and nothing else. Conversations don’t progress the plot, actions barely have an effect, but there’s a real-world time that the book keeps that progresses the story no matter what.

The dialogue at times is well-written and believable at times. Other times it feels incredibly tropy and reliant upon archetypes. For instance, the English man that’s all about the sexy talk. He talks about sex a lot. Doesn’t do anything about it and it seems like there’s a twist to his character coming because of how often he tries to remind women that he’s down for the sexy time, anytime. Either that or he’s just one of those guys that are like that and just annoying and a burden on the dialogue. I liked the characters, but I didn’t care for the story.

The art is nice. It didn’t wow me, but I liked what I saw. It captured the Cold War era quite well, and for being talking heads, for the most part, it held my interest. I didn’t care for the men’s hair. Not that that style was wrong, but that they all looked like bad wigs. The women’s hair was great, but the men… all wigs.

I doubt I’ll be back for the next issue. I don’t care for the subject matter, and I have a feeling that the book’s characters are either going to live up to the title or fail it miserably and I don’t particularly find that interesting. It’s different from the rest of the comics out this week so that might be enough reason for someone else to pick it up, but for me, it wasn’t entertaining enough to carry on with it.

Keep making comics.

Score: 3/5

The Skeptics #1
Writer: Tini Howard
Artist: Devaki Neogi
Publisher: Black Mask Studios