This was sent to me from Sea Lion Books and is the newest title from Pat Lee.  Yes, that Pat Lee (see Dreamwave controversy).  I was a bit confused how this comic came to be, and reading it didn’t clarify anything.  Some moments of research reveal that this comic was originally announced in 2009 and the two lead women are a Hong Kong pop group.  This knowledge did not make any part of the comic any better for me.

I feel awful for David Wohl who is so much better than this.  I’d love to know how much or how little he did on this book, as its a co writing credit.  I support David and everything else he’s written, but this…. I don’t know what happened.  In fact, Brian Buccellato is pretty good too.  There is nothing wrong with a writer having a bad day.  Joss wrote that horrible Storm/Toad line in the first X-Men movie.  Bad writing happens.  But there is something different here.  Neither man’s sites or pages have any mention of this work at all.   A Google search turns up empty as well, except for a mention of the two girl Hong Kong pop stars and the original mention of this project on a forum from 2009.

The only answer I have is the creator and artist for this book, Pat Lee.  I was surprised by the Extraterrestrial Compendium, a very good book from Lee.  However, there is the history of non payments and lawsuits and all that other fun stuff that hangs over him.  Well now bad artist can be added.  Which is crazy, because he used to be considered great.  Or at least someone was doing great work and he was signing his name to it.  This art is awful though.  First, half of the book makes no sense.  If the point of the title is to spotlight these two female singers (who also happen to be two of the main characters) why would they have their faces covered for the overwhelming majority of the comic?  Hair, shadows, energy blasts, something is constantly covering them up.  Is it to build mystery or to cover up bad art with darkness and heavy inks?  Also, where there is no blackness there is an almost blinding light in the panels.  The only comparison I can think of are lens flares.  Most of the panels have lens flares.  Whether this book was done in 2009 or 2013 doesn’t matter.  Lens flares can be too much in a multi hundred million dollar movie, they are damn sure unnecessary in the pages of a comic book.

Not even a good or original comic either!  There are two warring sides, the black and the white.  They combined into the grey at some point.  Which non ironically brings in grey aliens.  Oh and an invasion of Earth.  Also, the story jumps from the two Hong Kong singers fighting on a spaceship to future Toronto where two women who may be the same women (but might not be too) meet on the street and might know each other somehow but might not too.

It hurts to just write that sentence.  I’m going to assume that David and Brian have a hell of a story to tell about what the hell happened here.  I cant say anything about Pat Lee that hasn’t already been said on Bleeding Cool.  Sea Lion can produce some really enjoyable titles.  This… this isn’t one of them.