We pick up right where we left off in the first issue of Reality Check.  Will is having a massive case of writer’s block, and can’t get anything done on his own comic entitled Dark Hour.  To make matters worse, Dark Hour himself has escaped from the comic book and ended up in Will’s bedroom.  Will doesn’t really believe it’s actually Dark Hour, he thinks it’s some actor that the publisher paid.  Dark Hour eventually proves to Willard that it’s actually him. They go for a bit of a joyride around L.A. thanks to Dark Hour’s grappling hook skills.  He even sends Will tumbling towards the streets when he says “You don’t really expect me to believe that you’re an actual character that came out of my head, do you?”  After he saves Will’s life by catching him, Will is convinced he’s real. Dark Hour reveals his intentions and reasons for bursting into Will’s life.  He’s striking out with women, and he wants a girlfriend.  He makes kind of a deal with Willard that if he can find him a girlfriend, he’ll go back to the comic.  Until then though, Will can’t make any more issues since his character is in his real life, not the comic.  Dark Hour’s attempts to pick up ‘babage’ as he says are futile, just as Will created him.  He tries to save a girl who’s speeding and winding in and out of traffic, but ends up totaling her car with his grappling hook.  She then gets arrested, thwarting any hope of Dark Hour’s further advances.

The two then go to the Starbuck’s where Will came up with the idea for one of the female characters’ faces.  In the last issue that girl thought he was a creep and smacked him in the face.  They run into these girls again, and Thomas (Thomas Scott, the real name and non-superhero version of Dark Hour) is convinced the one who thinks Will is a creep is actually his ex-girlfriend.  She is relatively curious since she thinks he’s good-looking, but her friend sprays Thomas in the face with pepper spray.  Outside, they find an issue of L.A. Weekly with John Skinner on the front.  Willard went to school with him, and thinks he’s a complete tool.  After Will and Allison’s relationship ended, she started going out with John Skinner.  He’s now an extremely successful DJ and is playing at a local nightclub.

Scott wants to get into that club because if he meets a girl who could potentially be his girlfriend, he promises Will he’ll go back into the comic.  Will gets them on the guest list after speaking to Skinner-or so he thinks.  When they get to the nightclub, they’re told that Skinner never approved them from the guest list.  Then a thug comes out of nowhere and points a gun to the bouncer’s face.  Thomas Scott transforms into Dark Hour in line at the club and disarms the thug.  The bouncer lets them in and treats them as VIPs since Dark Hour saved his life.  Inside, Thomas meets Allison-who ends up to be the girl of his dreams.  He tells Will that now all he has to do is make Allison fall in love with him, and then he’ll go back into the comic.  Meanwhile, we find out that the thug was actually a human form of The Devil Inside, Dark Hour’s arch nemesis…and he wants Dark Hour and Willard dead.

Although there isn’t a whole lot of substance to the story, this is just one enjoyable read.  I breezed through reading this but was still interested the whole way through.  Adding a bit of humor is always welcomed, and Reality Check delivers.  There were a few times Dark Hour sounded exactly like Will created him in different real-life situations.  He analyzes simple situations way too far.  For example, when he’s reading about Dubstep, he says “How can we dance to an un-danceable beat and still look cool enough to attract babage?”  It’s genuinely a fun time being immersed in Will and Dark Hour’s adventures (or misadventures) as they continually fail to fix their respective troubles.

Score: 4/5

Writer: Glen Brunswick Artist: Viktor Bogdanovic Publisher: Image Comics Price: $2.99 Release Date: 10/2/13