The Doorman #1 and #2 Review and **SPOILERS** –– Just For the Hell Of It Mondays

Let My Love Open the Door to Your Interstellar Portal Network

Written By: Eliot Rahal & Daniel Kibblesmith

Art and Letters By: Kendal Goode

Color Assist: David B. Cooper

Cover Price: $3.50

Release Date: March 16, 2016

**Non-Spoilers and Score At The Bottom**

I loved Heavy Metal magazine when I was in junior high, I think I was drawn to the lush artwork as well as the dismissive, authoritative way I could assert that the publication had nothing to do with the musical genre of the same title. And the tits. I was drawn to the tits. I brought an issue to school one day and passed it around the lunchroom, and was eventually caught by some monitor or other authority figure that confiscated the publication and forwarded it, along with myself, to the Dean’s Office. There, Mr. Whatsizname and I pored over the pages and praised the meticulous renderings therein, tits included, and then he gave the magazine back to me and told me never to bring it to school again. Well that has nothing to do with today’s Just For the Hell Of It Mondays review of The Doorman issues #1 and #2, except they’re put out by Heavy Metal Comics, which I didn’t know existed. And Kevin Eastman, aka Mr. One-half-of-the-guys-that-created-Teenage-Mutant-Ninja-Turtles seems to be in charge of the whole thing. Where the hell have I been? Either these comics contain little to no nudity, or my Tit-Radar is on the fritz. I won’t count that against the Doorman, so read on for my review of two whole comic books!

Explain It!:

Anyone who’s ever endured a long-distance relationship has wondered the same thing: why doesn’t teleportation exist already? Star Trek makes it seem so obvious, a mere scattering and rearrangement of atomic particles transmitted over interstellar wi-fi. At the very least, one would think a mystical Stargate or some such would have been uncovered at some archeological dig by now. No, we third-dimensional losers are still constrained by the bounds of time and space, which is probably a good thing, ethically-speaking, because we are such dickheads, ethically-speaking. Considering how quick people can be to ire, imagine if all that separated an internet troll from a punch in the face was a temporal warp, or if a stalker had the ability to appear anywhere, any time in his creepy repertoire. This must by why such portals in this comic book world have Porters, doormen that guard mysterious spatial warms of unknown origin that send people from place-to-place instantaneously—with aid of the Porter’s key, that is.

Enter Henry Clay Waters, Porter of Earth at a door located within an innocuous-looking building in the heart of Times Square, New York City. He’s been on the job for forty-five years, and today is his last day; presumably, he will be succeeded by a new Porter to whom he will tell all of the door’s secrets—except he’s about to be murdered by a fish-looking dude in a tuxedo (that he mistook for a member of the retirement committee) who steps through the door with his gun drawn! Henry’s saved by Detective Flowers, noseless member of the Confederation of Systems’ Police Department, who is also tracking down a conspiracy against Porters, who have been murdered in droves. All signs point to super-rich and super-assholish Carlisle Moongale, CEO of Moongale Industries headquartered on planet Synergos, from where Carlise is hard at work improving the efficiency of his assholdom. One clue that definitely makes Carlisle a prime suspect in these mysterious Porter murders is when he invites every Porter to planet Synergos for an ice cream social, and then has them murdered. Also, his eyes seem furtive.

Flowers and Waters escape this culling only to find themselves menaced by another gun-wielding fish face that shoots Flowers in the head. Waters gets revenge by turning off a portal when the fish-faced assassin is just emerging, severing his gun-toting arm (arguably his most important one.) Flowers, who turns out to be relatively unaffected by bullets in her face, takes it as evidence to the Lieutenant of the CSPD—but he is also in Carlisle Moongale’s pocket! Under Moongale’s direction, the Lieutenant takes Flowers and Waters to an uninhabited desert planet, where he’s going to let them die to death! And meanwhile, Carlisle Moongale’s plan to discredit the teleportation doors so people will favor his luxury interstellar travel progresses forward! And if that doesn’t entice you to check out this comic book, nothing will! But if you think it sounds pretty cool, then I implore you to check it out!

This is a pretty cool comic book, and people should take a look. The art is really solid and well-done, the plotting and pacing of each issue was perfectly executed. I’m more a science fiction fan and less a mystery fan, but this tale strikes a great balance of cool space elements and social commentary with in-story clues to what we don’t know—a neat trick, since there’s a LOT we don’t know! We’ll see if successive issues continue to follow this delicate trend, or if my interest runs out before questions are answered. The strong showing of these two issues give me no reason to think that will happen, and I’ll certainly be checking for issue number three.

 

Plus: Cool-looking shit like this drawing.

Bits and Pieces

This is a really good-looking and interesting comic book that you should check out. Unless you have something against mysteries or cool science fiction, in that case you should stay away. Like for instance if you like comic books about real people experiencing no internal or external conflict, like maybe a comic about a successful clothing retailer that is happy and personally fulfilled, and then the big "story" is that someone says, "hey, you should give some of your money to this nice charity," and then the retailer has an accountant look at the feasibility of making this donation, and then the accountant comes back and said it would actually be beneficial at tax time to make this and several other philanthropic donations, so the retailer does this and people are then totally on his jock, and then later the retailer is like "you know, I was just as spiritually fulfilled before as I am now, but today people think I'm some hot shit because I give money away to charities for tax shelter reasons, and that affords me a different kind of fulfillment: one of my vanity and ego." And much later on he dies of natural causes on a real comfy, expensive bed. So if that kind of story seems more interesting than a murderous conspiracy and interstellar teleportation then by all means, pass on this book. Crazy.

8.5/10