Dancer #1

Written by Nathan Edmondson
Art by Nic Klein

I didn't quite know what to expect when I picked up this comic.  I know that I've enjoyed Nathan Edmondson's writing on series like Who Is Jake Ellis?, The Light, and The Activity, and that Nic Klein's work on Viking blew me away, and that was enough to guarantee this comic would be purchased.  I don't really read solicitation information or previews of comics I know I'm going to buy, preferring to be surprised, but I'd decided that this comic was going to be about a ballerina who was also a spy, government agent, or assassin.  It's not that much of a stretch really - wasn't the Black Widow a ballerina at one point or another?

Anyway, that's not the case here.  The story is about a ballerina, but it's her boyfriend who is really at the centre of the story.  When the comic opens (after a bloody prelude set in Brazil), our Irish dancer is leaving rehearsal with her American boyfriend, and they go out for coffee in Milan.  The man decides that something is going on, and gets the girl moving, before they are accosted by some men in suits.

As it turns out, this guy used to do some work for the CIA, and now it looks like he's been burned, or is wanted for some other reason.  There's not a lot of exposition, and the book reads like a cross between Jake Ellis and the Wildstorm series Garrison (that's as close as I'll get to a spoiler).  This issue ends quite abruptly, and feels like it was written as a graphic novel and not as a series.

Klein's art is pretty nice, but he doesn't mix up his style like he did in Viking, which is a shame.  I'm interested enough to check out another issue (actually, I've preordered the next two), but I'm not exactly blown out of the water here.  The book is very familiar, and I would have preferred to see something a little more original.