TITLE: National Comics: Looker #1
AUTHOR: Ian Edginton
PENCILLER: Mike S. Miller. Cover by Guillem March.
PUBLISHER: DC Comics
PRICE: $3.99
RELEASED: August 29, 2012

By Rob Siebert
Editor, Fanboy Wonder

After the awesomeness that was last month’s National Comics: Eternity, I was hoping for at least a little bit more of the same in terms of quality with this month’s one-shot dedicated to Looker. And that’s what I got, a little bit of the same.

In the pre-New 52 DC Universe, Looker was a longtime member of the Outsiders cast. Originally a shy bank teller named Emily Briggs, she gained metahuman abilities, then later became a vampire. No longer a wallflower, she became fixated on her own beauty and subsequently started a modeling career. This new take on the character depicts Emily as a supermodel turned vampire, who started her own agency called Looker when her new sensitivity to sunlight forced her to retire from the spotlight. Now Emily preys on the guilty to feed her fix. Her only confidants are her personal assistant Roma, and her business partner Charles.

Eternity felt like a standalone story that made you say: “Damn! I’d love to read a monthly book like this!” Looker feels like a more blatant pitch for a monthly book. There’s nothing wrong with that, especially since that’s the purpose of the National Comics line. But Eternity set the bar so high, any story placed after it would have a hard time measuring up.

Still, Looker is still pretty good on its own merits. Like Eternity, our main character isn’t necessarily a superhero, but instead a person with extraordinary abilities trying to fit into the world. There’s some True Blood in here, some Dexter, and even a little Project Runway (the Charles character somehow reminds me of Tim Gunn). From a writing standpoint, the low point in the book is when Ian Edginton plants the seed for a love interest for Emily, which he doesn’t have enough time to give much depth to. But it’s a definite opportunity for interesting storytelling if he gets a chance to come back to it.

The art is also quite good, with Mike S. Miller giving us a main character that’s confidant and sexy, yet most definitely deadly. The Charles character, as well as our villain for the issue are so well defined from a visual standpoint that they almost don’t need to have any dialogue. To an extent, we understand them just by looking at them. They’re “Lookers” in that sense. Zing! Guillem March also takes a break from over-sexualizing Catwoman to give us a pretty cool cover.

Since the start of the New 52 initiative, DC has been trying harder to branch outside the superhero genre with its pre-established characters. We’ve seen horror comics, war comics, comics that incoporpoate more mystical and fantasy elements, etc. Both Eternity and Looker continued that trend, while keeping their eyes on what’s hot in the modern era. While Eternity borrowed from today’s crime shows and incorporated a supernatural investigator. Looker channels more of the sexed up horror stories of today, and pleads a decent case argument for an ongoing series. At the very least, I’m certainly interested in seeing this character again.

Front page image from ifanboy.com. Interior image 1 from bleedingcool.com. Image 2 from timkarinn.tumblr.com/