Hoax Hunters #0

Written by Michael Moreci and Steve Seeley
Art by JM Ringuet

I picked this up as an impulse buy this week, mostly because I thought that the cover by Steve Seeley was very cool.

For a 'zero' issue, this comic doesn't go very far in introducing and explaining the main characters.  We meet three people who work for a Myth-Busters style reality show, where they debunk hoaxes and urban legends.  One of the three hosts is named Ken Cadaver, and there is evidence to believe he is a zombie, but it's not discussed.  Regan, the female host, apparently has mental powers, but that is never explained (nor is it explained how she escapes capture in one scene, but I'm getting ahead of myself).  The issue is almost over before we find out that the third member of the team is named Jack, and that's not even clear.  I don't expect to know everything about a character in the first issue of a comic, but I think some basics need to be established.

The team travels (between pages) to Russia to investigate sightings of an American astronaut being carried around by crows.  How did the team get to Russia?  Why are they able to travel around so freely and find that everyone can speak English?  Why didn't they take their cameras?  I get it that the TV show is a cover for their possibly government sanctioned operations, but none of this is made clear here.  It really feels like this comic could have worked, had it had a more critical editor.  I do like the art (has JM Ringuet done anything else besides Transhuman, his book with Jonathan Hickman?), and the new character Murder is pretty cool, but I can't see myself picking up the first issue of this series (which is going to be drawn by Axel Medellin, who I thought was the regular artist on Elephantmen).