3 out of 5

The imprint on which ‘Parallel Man’ appears – Future Dude – is a ‘transmedia’ company that’s approaching video games, films, comics and TV with equal eagerness, all of the properties skewed toward sci-fi.  It’s a very modern company in this sense, trying to bypass the still-lingering old-fashioned or childish tags that often get lumped with comics and leverage the juxtaposing current flourishing interest in bringing these properties to all of those mediums mentioned.  It’s an interesting time to be a comic fan, and FD seems intent on hitting the ground running.

It’s admirable, and the smiles-to-the-audience mentality is obvious even in ‘Parallel Man’s design, the covers of which look more like serialized fantasy novels than comics, and the staff credited with movie-esque titles like Executive Producer and Story Consultant.  It would all seem a bit cheeky except that it’s done with honesty, and that the mindset bleeds into the work as well, rounding out the feel.  Of course, this subsequently means that ‘Parallel’ reads not much  like a comic book, but moreso like the hodgepodge suggested by the company’s mixed pursuits: notes of comic booky flash mixed with filmic scope and television’s character-type cliches and subplotting.  The art and colors (Christopher Jones, Zac Atkinson, respectively) also have that ‘adapted from TV’ stiffness that’s seen in books where the artist has to attempt to capture a real person’s likeness, as though this script was written with some particular casting in mind.  At no point are these elements incompetent, it just makes for an odd read, especially as the plot steps away from its high-end, multi-universe concept toward a good guy vs. bad guy approach that definitely reeks more of digestible TV than hard-edged sci-fi.  The initial setup of a rogue world-traveler trying to collect pieces of some ultimate something or other while being pursued by unrogue travelers gives the start of the book a good kick, but then the next few issues dial it back to fill us in on the What and Why, and the odd staging becomes all the more apparent.

Still, FutureDude is an interesting venture, and the series isn’t without some cool SF concepts.  The execution is an acquired taste, and rather clearly not written by comic vets (…not that I looked up the history, there, so if these guys have been comic book-ing for years… whoops?), but that might be a good thing for someone looking to branch from TV and books INTO the genre.