Doctor Fate #1 Review and *SPOILERS*

Written By: Paul Levitz
Art By: Sonny Liew, Lee Loughridge
Cover Price: $2.99
Release Date: June 17, 2015

Don't Toy With Fate

*Non Spoilers and Score At The Bottom*

It's time for Doctor Fate to get all up in our faces with his own title, but don't go expecting that bad ass Doctor Fate from Earth 2 here.  No, instead we'll get a Earth-0 version who's just a kid dealing with kid things..........like going to med school......okay maybe not everyday kid things, but younger things that I don't fully understand anymore because of my age and my shut-in nature.  What we saw from the Sneak Peek is, Anubis is tired of all of us sucking the way we do and is going to cause a flood to wipe out mankind....... or New York, either way, you get the gist.  Now only if we had a Doctor Fate around to save our asses.  Let's get into this issue and see if we do.

Explain It!:

Our issue doesn't screw around with getting us right to the point and showing our hero Khalid inside the Brooklyn Museum, being offered the helm of Fate by a statue or something.  You all better know your ancient Egyptian gods going in because this book won't hold your hand as it throws names at you like you were close acquaintances with them in college.  As you'd expect from reasonable thinking, Khalid believes that he's been dosed with acid and high tails it out of there and makes his way home.  Now, knowing that you just saw some unreasonable shit at a museum, would you perhaps jump down on a subway track when a lousy mother allows her child to fall on the tracks?  Well, you're probably a better person than me so your answer doesn't matter.  What matters is, Khalid jumps down and saves the child, but before he could get back up, the train comes speeding towards him.  Luckily, Khalid seems to be protected or pulled some magic out of his ass and makes the train stop before creaming him.  The weirdest part about all of this though was when Khalid saves the girl, the mother says "Thank G-D."  We're getting Egyptian gods thrown at us left and right, but the book won't say god?  No, I'm not getting all preachy on you, I just found it to be an odd choice.

After Khalid magically saves himself, he's met by his pet cat, who appears to be imbued with the goddess Bastet and after all the craziness that Khalid has dealt with today, why not follow a talking cat back to the museum and begin sporting a helmet?  Even though we just saw the cat across town at his parents house, but I guess that doesn't matter.......MAGIC!  So Bastet breaks down what's going on to Khalid and how he has the blood of the Pharaohs running through him and that he's the only one who can stop Anubis and his plan on wiping out mankind.  You know the basic sales pitch.  So Khalid accepts and puts on the helmet and immediately begins feeling the power flow through him and since Bastet allowed Khalid to see the truth and because no one worships her anymore, her time is over and she moves on to be recreated.  

In the end, with all the power of Fate at his disposal, Khalid simply flies around and gets stuck up on a bridge when he decides to take the helmet off.  So it looks like Nabu isn't in control of this Fate.  So not much going on with our hero except for him being really confused and as our issue closes we see Anubis take out his rage on Khalid's taxi driver father, by making a tree fall over on his car.  The ending is a bit weird though because Khalid's father, Mohammed had a fair he was taking to JFK, but after the tree crunched the car, we see the fair get out and say that Mohammed shouldn't have left Egypt.  So either he was always an agent of Anubis, or Anubis took this opportunity to possess the man during the commotion.

That's it for this first issue of Doctor Fate and as much as I love this character, I couldn't get into this book.  There was no character development anywhere in this book besides for Khalid being paranoid about being on drugs and we're just supposed to accept this early 20's guy as Doctor Fate because he happens to have the first name of our Earth 2 Fate and has the last name of our Golden Age one........that's right, his name is Khalid Nelson and I'd like to know what part of Egypt his father was from with the last name Nelson.  This sounds like just a bunch of nitpicky nonsense, but all we have are Egyptian gods damning man and a young guy putting on a helmet eventually and that's it.  I wasn't a fan of the art and I don't know if this hoodie wearing Doctor Fate is something that I could ever get into.

Bits and Pieces:

We're just thrown into the deep end with this issue as we see Khalid being offered the helm of Fate, but nothing that happens in this issue really makes me want to see more of these characters or even care if Khalid continues being Doctor Fate.  There was no character development to be found and with an entire spread page dedicated to Khalid talking to his girlfriend via text, I kind of hope that Anubis wipes out mankind.  That's a bit harsh, but I just wasn't a fan of this story or the art.

4.5/10