Publisher: Dynamite
Writers: Jim Butcher, Mark Powers
Artist: Carlos Gomez
Colourist: Mohan
Release date: OUT NOW!
Price: $3.99

Perhaps Jim Butcher’s The Dresden Files: Down Town should be named ‘Carlos Gomez’s: The Dresden Files’ since the art seems to be the premiere feature of this comic book.

Jim Butcher and Mark Powers magical mystery tour pits a poor man’s John Constantine (Harry Dresden), his apprentice Molly Carpenter, officer Sergeant Karrin Murphy and a beefed-up demi-dog named Mouse, against magical wise guy ‘Gentleman’ Johnny Marcone, who looks like a cross between Dumbledore and Hagrid.

However, what could have been a great villain concept, in the character a magical, organized crime boss, ‘Gentleman’ Johnny Marcone , comes across as another dull, monologuing bad guy. Likewise the other characters who seem to solely exist to react to the action and very little else.

And that is the basic flaw in Jim Butcher’s The Dresden Files: Down Town #5: there is very little abracadabra. Not saying is all lacklustre, Butcher and Powers has some good ideas but, as Shakespeare once penned: ‘there is many a slip betwixt cup and lip’. And Jim Butcher’s The Dresden Files: Down Town #5 fails into this category. The execution is at best pedestrian, and at worst borderline plagiarism. That makes it doubly disappointing. It’s like magician David Copperfield promising to hide the Eiffel Tower and instead doing card tricks and pretending that it is on the same level.

In contrast, Gomez’s fine art is no illusion. The Golem design is original and there are some nice angled points of view. Mohan’s deft coloring adds to the visual alchemy.

In the end,  Jim Butcher’s The Dresden Files: Down Town #5 has too many stereotypically talking heads with nothing to balance them out. The artwork arrives too late to save a drowning comic book.

Reviewer: Joe Lovece
Reviews Editor: Steve Hooker