When I'm looking at a new indy series by unfamiliar creators, I tend to get either something surprisingly good or depressingly average. I'm afraid that in the case of Touch of Death, it appears to be the latter. Kirsten's story of a woman with a mysterious death touch and a conspiracy is not a wholly bad idea, but the execution leaves a lot to be desired, lacking in interesting characters or in a structure that lends much suspense to the whole thing. The art, by Dillon and Taylor, is a bit on the stronger side, especially when they're doing backdrops and set-pieces, but it's still not strong enough to overcome a lackluster story.
I've gotten a bit spoiled in the dialogue department by modern writers like Bendis, Rucka and Brubaker, and I don't think asking that to be the standard that is aimed for is a bad thing. Kirsten's dialogue, however, reads not like people speaking but like characters explaining, and it never really draws the reader into the series. I was willing to forgive the clinical speech to some extent with the coroner in the beginning, but even when stress and violence begins to close in on her, she maintains a stilted and artifical speech pattern. It's even more noticeable in the dialogue between the young couple, where their relationship comes across as much less loving and close than I suspect it's meant to. A big problem is Kirsten's decision to avoid contractions for the most part, making everything sound a lot more formal than it should. But the larger problem is that every line seems designed to communicate something in the story rather than develop the characters.
This wouldn't be quite so big of a problem if the story being communicated was coming through more clearly, but there's not enough of substance to grab my interest in that regard either. The conspiracy story has been done to death, and it's got to have more of an original twist than men in black coming to grab evidence to get my attention. The story of the mysterious man who disrupted a peaceful tribe likewise reads like a hundred other stories I've read before, and it's too easy to see the plot machinations going on in the foreground to really let yourself be engaged by the story.
Ray Dillon is a name I know largely from his lettering work with Golden Goat Studios, but his artwork is interesting enough to look at. I'm impressed by the detail he puts into the backgrounds especially, most notably the opening storm scene in the #0 story and the alley that leads to "Underfaith." The characters aren't quite as distinctive, but there's some solid work there, with good anatomy and expressions, enough to make the story clear at the least.
With a high concept that isn't clearly explained in the first issue, a set of bland characters and some stilted dialogue, Touch of Death fails to grab my attention. The series is only three issues long, which means that it needed a great deal more substance and a much more impressive style in the first issue.
