3 out of 5

Not what I was expecting.  Actually, a lot of the Mirage “Next” books are surprisingly interesting, just enough degrees shy of comic book normal to keep you reading, then developing seemingly mundane setups into broader ideas that would’ve been nice to see played out…  Oh well.  Dooney’s writing and paneling has never been stellar, but even though he was in the big-muscle Image mode at this point, ‘Xenotech’ gets a big setup across pretty painlessly and strikes a nice balance, for Dooney, between the cheekiness of Gizmo and his Turtles stuff and the forehead slapping testosterone of the Savage Dragon book he worked on.  Although some of the premise reminds me of Malibu’s Exiles – with which ‘Next’ shares a few other details (though is less bombastic and exclamation pointy than that publisher) – ‘Xeno’ surprised me by being about a little more than just muscles and monsters.  The initial three issue mini spins a tale of tech-enhanced heroes who, without volunteering, have been transformed in various ways – metal tentacles, a rocky shell – in order to protect Earth from the ‘Xenos’ – aliens – who crash our Earthy party via space-time rifts.  Yeah, pretty standard, but without rubbing subplots in our face, Dooney gives us a balding leader of Tech Force and his robot assistant and a quick overview of how the rifts came to be and a new recruit and a random sorceress who lives on Staten Island and a first battle with some big bad monsters.  Meanwhile, a good power limitation is worked in – these enhancements are harmful to the owner if not powered down once in a while – and several questions are posed via the new recruit that are sensibly sidestepped in favor of saving the planet from rift monsters instead of the typical “we’ll tell you when you’re ready” nonsense.  Same effect, achieved a bit more smoothly.

And because it’s completely Mike’s show, he gets to do what he wants with the panels.  So sometimes things get a little cluttered or improperly foreshortened, as is his game, but it’s a lot more fluid than Gizmo and a lot less clunky than the Dragon crossover.  Plus the bright printing style of latter-day Mirage.

Maybe it’s good that ‘Next’ tanked before the inevitable all-title crossover, but this is a rare example of a hero book that actually pushed itself just far enough left or right that I wasn’t sure what to expect, and makes me legitimately curious to find out what the answers to some of those questions would’ve been.