Former Marvel editor-in-chief Bob Harras shows up over at DC with Breach, a new ongoing series.  It's a new character, although he seems intended to plug the Captain Atom-shaped hole in the DC Universe.  Nothing wrong with that, mind you - better than instantly bringing the real one back.

Harras is largely known as an editor who prevailed over some of the more scattershot nineties Marvel comics, although he did have a run writing Avengers.  And in all fairness, he's generally credited with coming up with Age of Apocalypse, a rare example of a major crossover with an actual plot and strong central idea.

Even so, I approach the prospect of a Bob Harras title with healthy scepticism.  But Breach is actually rather good.  It's difficult to put my finger on exactly why, because in story terms, this is an almost generic origin story.  Decent family man Tim Zanetti is standing around during a military experiment to reach another dimension when it all goes horribly wrong and he's mysteriously transformed by weird energy.  Then he spends 20 odd years in a coma until he wakes up.  That's pretty much it, and of course, there's nothing new there.

But Breach succeeds on the subtler levels.  There's nothing strikingly unusual about Tim as a character either - he's basically written as Mr Average.  However, Harras makes him feel like a rounded, believable character.  There's also just enough hints of possible ulterior motives in the story to tease at future developments, but without falling into the usual error of losing sight of the story at hand in favour of endless hint-dropping.  I'm genuinely interested in Tim's story, even though he's not an exceptional character and it isn't (thus far) an exceptional series of events, simply because it's rather well told.

Marcos Martin's art tends towards the minimal and low key for much of the issue, but handles the dynamic moments well.  I'm less sure about the character's costume - which only turns up here in an opening flash forward scene.  With the jagged lines and random geometric shapes, it's a bit nineties.  When much of the issue could happily pass for something out of Human Target (and that's a good thing), he seems a bit jarring.  Perhaps that's the point.

Anyhow, much better than I was expecting.  Worth a look.

Rating: A-

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