Bruce Jones takes the Vertigo line back to its roots, so it would seem, transforming a lesser-known mainstay of DC's super-hero universe into a darker, more mature and less super-hero-y property. When the imprint launched years ago, this was a tack that creators often took, with just several of DC's magic-based heroes being transformed into Vertigo properties, as well as such obscure and unlikely characters as Prez, Brother Power the Geek and even the Tattooed Man, a Green Lantern villain. Sometimes, the retooled characters kept their DC histories (e.g., Zatanna), but others were completely rebuilt from the ground up. Bruce Jones and John Watkiss's Deadman falls into the latter category.
Pilot Brandon Cayce experiences a nightmare like no other. He dreams he and his brother are piloting a doomed flight into London, one that crashes and kills all on board... including them. Brandon is relieved to emerge from the nightmare, but it's one that never ends. He begins reliving the worst moments of his life... his father's death to his brother and girlfriend's betrayal. It turns out the nightmare is all too real, and Brandon's life is flashing before his eyes. His death, like everyone else's on board the aircraft, is inevitable, but Brandon's afterlife experience is far different than what he expected.
Watkiss's art serves the script quite well. Perception is fluid and confusing in this story, and the visual scene transitions work with that approach. Sometimes they're subtle, and at others, they're abrupt and disorienting. The inky figures and sharp angles in his art here reminded me a bit of the style of Phil (Green Arrow, Nightwing) Hester. Watkiss's greatest contribution to the issue was his success in conveying the immensity of scope and chaos of the plane crash at Heathrow. It's an exciting sequence that brings the story into focus and accelerates the drama incredibly well. The gratuitous sexualization of the book's lone female character in the final scene was completely unnecessary and took me out of the story, unfortunately.
This first issue sets up the premise in the closing pages, but the story in this initial episode is really about the extreme sibling rivalry that exists between Brandon and Scott Cayce. It brings the nightmare of a plane crash and the impossibility of the title character's undeath down to earth with something to which the reader can relate. I hope this dysfunctional family dynamic continues to come into play in future issues, as it's definitely the most interesting aspect of the character.
I'm intrigued by the characters and concepts here, but they're far removed from the original Deadman. Boston Brand was a ghost while this new Deadman is a walking corpse, not an invisible spectre. The differences are so pronounced that I wonder why the Deadman brand had to be used at all. It's like the new Miami Vice movie. It bears little resemblance to the TV show from which it derives its title and character names, and with the talent involved, it probably could have stood up well on its own with a different title and without the 1980s brand name. The same holds true for the 21st century incarnation of Deadman. 7/10
