Madame Mirage #2
Written by Paul Dini
Art by Kenneth Rocafort
Colors by Imaginary Friends Studios
Letters by Troy Peteri
Top Cow Productions
Cover price: $2.99; On-sale date: Sept. 2007

The chameleon-like Madame Mirage chooses a face and a body that men will die for, and that bras will want to hide from.

Paul Dini, the Emmy-winning creator of The Batman Adventures cartoon series, teams up with very talented artist Kenneth Rocafort to create Madame Mirage, a new superheroine for Top Cow.

Madame Mirage can change her appearance, and seemingly, the appearance of others. She can change her clothes at will and look exactly like any other person she is around. It may be as simple as her just seeing them. She can change into inanimate objects as well and also different masses do not seem to be a problem. She is taking out a criminal organization one peg, henchman, at a time.

These events pick up right from issue #1, and we learn all we need to from the banter between Madame Mirage and her sidekick, whose name we don’t learn in this issue. We’ll learn even more about the Madame in the next issue, including her shocking past.

Dini seems to want the reader to use their eyes, and wits, to follow the story, rather than spoon-feeding them the whole thing. I like, want, and respect that. He is taking it slow in this issue, letting us get a feel for Madame Mirage. It’s nice seeing her work her magic and using her brain at the same time.

The artwork is a beautiful spectacle. Rocafort’s style is like Howard Chaykin meets Leinil Francis Yu with moments of Travis Charest. His work is not inked in Madame Mirage, but wonderfully colored, and complimented, by Imaginary Friends Studios.

Rocafort creates some very imaginative, fun framing techniques. He also incorporates the design and beauty of the architecture into the panels. This is done particularly well on the cover, but throughout the book as well.

There was at least one establishing shot missing, and some of the guns throughout the issue didn’t seem to be aimed where they should have been. One very opportune panel in which Madame Mirage is surrounded by a roomful of people with guns was an easy call for a bird’s eye view, and it doesn’t even have the correct perspective. That’s just being picky though, the pages are great to look at, and Rocafort’s version of Madame Mirage is extremely hot.

This adults title, mostly for cursing and violence, disappointingly not for sexuality, is 21 pages of great artwork and exciting story with a nice, simple twist ending that you don’t see coming, even though it makes perfect sense.

Madame Mirage is fun, and at the same time, gritty and hard-hitting with awesome artwork and a lot of potential. I’m glad this Mirage is for real.