The Contingent #1, created by Zack Kruse and Cameron Merkler, written by Zack Kruse, art by Zue, published by Mind Storm, (c) 2008

Reviewed by Benita Story http://johnnysaturn.com — www.basicallybenita.com

The story of The Contingent begins in Bolivia with the birth of a baby boy, resulting in the death of his mother. Jump forward 15 years later and this now teenage boy is playing soccer with others in what appears to be a very poverty stricken village. The arrival of two people from America change this boy’s life forever.

The art in this book is more polished that what you see in the majority of indy-comics, the coloring is top-notch, the writing clean and concise. But, unfortunately, the story itself is a rather blatant copy of Marvel/X-Men/Xavier School for the Gifted down to a girl with Cyclops powers, kids who can fly, levitate, make fire, etc. It would have been better for the writer to continue practicing his art in private until he was able to come up with a story line that was original. Taking an already well established idea and writing an already familiar story based on that is not truly creating as much as it is recreating, and the X-Men are far too popular for this story to seem other than what it is.

That being said, I do hope the writer and creators of this book continue to work. When they do come up with an original story idea, I will be happy to read it because there is talent here. Unfortunately, this story line has already been done to death by one of the big comic book companies.