It's always nice to see folks taking chances. DC certainly took some here, with a science-fiction tale unconnected to any DC property and without the edge that the Vertigo imprint might have implied. Colleen Doran took one as well, coming off the critical and commercial success of Orbiter to do this instead of a more high-profile book. Unfortunately, Keith Giffen takes the same chance he's taken with too many books of late, writing a first issue that goes beyond inaccessible to downright impenetrable, wasting all the potential of the book and the gorgeous Doran artwork on a story that spends too many pages making a point that could have been made more effectively (and certainly more clearly) in about five, leaving room for a story in this first issue instead of a bunch of exposition that isn't even clear enough to serve its primary purpose.
I learned more from the solicitations of Reign of the Zodiac than I did from this first issue, and that's a shame, since the solicitations didn't really reveal that much either. At any rate, Giffen takes a full issue to show us that twin worlds once linked by magic gateways are no longer linked, and the worlds are now ruled by an alliance of houses based on the Zodiac. The only characters we meet, largely through faceless narration, are a spoiled prince and a potentially subversive elder. I'm intrigued by the promise of this setting, and of the political wedding that seems to be at the center of the plot, but not much more intrigued than I was just from hearing the premise and learning that Colleen Doran was doing the artwork.
On that score, the book doesn't disappoint. Doran has earned a reputation for lush, beautiful work, and her work here certainly lives up to that reputation. Her vision of the worlds of Reign of the Zodiac encompasses mythology, architecture and style of European, African, South American and Middle Eastern cultures, creating a world that is familiar but believably alien as well. Her people and settings are so realistically rendered that it's easy to believe the more outrageous elements of the setting, such as magical silver gateways or flying dragon-like beasts. Her imagination and design sense shines through, and when she cuts away from the idyllic world presented in flashback to the grimy, ruined world of the modern story, the intended effect of showing how the mighty have fallen comes through loud and clear.
It's a shame that Doran's artwork is really the only portion of this book that seems interested in telling a story. Giffen spends the majority of the tale on two characters who speak through caption boxes, and the result is to distance the reader from the tale. It doesn't help that the colors chosen to differentiate these characters from one another is so similar that it's not easy to discern who is speaking, or that the voices of these characters are fairly generic. Both have the same sarcastic, haughty voice, and there's a strange disconnect between their occasional lapse into more flowery, poetic language and the casual vernacular that they employ. Doran's art invites the reader into a fantastic world, Giffen's prose brings them right back down to boring old Earth.
I want to like Reign of the Zodiac, because I like the general concept and I love the artwork. My hope is that with the basics of this world and its history established, Giffen will drop back into the interactive back-and-forth traditional comics storytelling that makes an appearance on the last six pages of the book, because that's where his strengths lie. It's also where the really interesting concepts and characterization were finally introduced, and I see potential in those last six pages which will make me come back, hoping for a story worthy of the artwork in future issues.
