Doctor Fate #3 Review and *SPOILERS*

Written By: Paul Levitz
Art By: Sonny Liew, Lee Loughridge
Cover Price: $2.99
Release Date: August 19, 2015

One Step Forward, Two Steps Back

*Non Spoilers and Score At The Bottom*

Who's up for another round of Doctor Fate?  Anyone?  Anyone?  Bueller?  Yeah, that's how I've been feeling about this series because even though I was originally gung ho for a title featuring the Fate Man himself, this version just isn't cutting it for me.  In the previous issue we had our new Doctor Fate: Khalid Nassour take on the helm, but where you'd expect awesomeness to come from that, instead we had him whining about how none of this could be real and him possibly killing a plane full of people...... that he didn't seem to really care about at all.  Yeah, this Fate isn't really working for me, but hopefully this all changes here because I'm going in fresh and expecting the best because I really want to like a title featuring Doctor Fate.  Let's jump into this issue and see if my sweet emotions will pay off or if I'm simply disappointed again.  Let's check it out.

Explain It!:

As our story begins, I'm flabbergasted.  I don't know if it's because of my optimistic attitude or if this title is pulling some real magic out of it's comic book ass, but this issue starts out pretty freaking good.  We have Khalid getting swept away in a river that has formed through the streets of New York and while he still whines about this not being real, he mans up a bit and summons the helmet back to him and begins Doctor Fate-ing the hell up.  Khalid uses his power to clear the streets of water and even saves people who were stupid enough to be out in a flood, when Anubis strikes again by tossing a cargo ship at our hero.  It's a pretty epic moment and out of nowhere this series has grabbed my attention.  Too bad that just when Khalid became interesting and looked like he was going to use the power of Thoth to take the fight to Anubis, we jump ahead to the next morning, where we find out that Khalid must have simply gone home after that and fell asleep.  What the shit?  

So Khalid has let me down again and instead of focusing the pages of this book on making Khalid a hero, we meet a neighbor girl named Akila who seems to have a crush on Khalid.......which does nothing for the story because our main character isn't even likable yet so introducing a possible new love interest means nothing to me.  Meanwhile, Anubis is on a quest to find the vessel of Bastet.......even though we saw Bastet die when Khalid dawned the helmet.  So with all those things that don't matter going on, Khalid makes his way back to the streets....... for some reason...... and decides that he's finally going to do some good with the power of Fate.

In the end, Khalid tries out his new powers and while I can't fault the story for not making Khalid a master of his power right away, it's just more of the same as Khalid doesn't know what he's doing and almost causes a helicopter to crash.  Luckily though, this time he actually saved the people inside the aircraft, but he continued to whine about how none of this is real while he did it.  Instead of practicing more and maybe preventing the destruction of New York, Khalid realizes that he never texted his girlfriend Shaya goodnight the night before and runs off to see her.

That's it for this issue of Doctor Fate and while the book started out strong as hell, it almost immediately began it's nonsense that this title has been filled with.  Absolutely no character development here and when you think there will be, the book chickens out and reverts back to something we've already seen...... which in this case is just a whiny dude, who is barely likable,.  So yeah, nothing new here, but I can say that I found myself more fond of the art than I have been since the series started....... so at least we have some baby steps going on here.  Maybe by the tenth issue..... if it lasts that long, I can get fully on board with this title, but I doubt that anyone would last that long when this title obviously has nothing to offer the reader.

Bits and Pieces:

Doctor Fate continues to disappoint here and because the book started out stronger than it ever has, I think it hurt that much more when it began it's downward slide into the nonsense that this title has been rife with.  Khalid continues to be whiny and the story really goes nowhere, so if you read the second issue, you're pretty much already caught up with the series.  

5/10