Review: Doctor Fate Vol. 2- Prisoners of the Past

September 15, 2020 ComicBookWire

Quick Summary

Pros: The volume depicts several interesting and entertaining battles. Khalid’s struggle between school and being a superhero is compelling.

Cons: The lack of longer story arcs prevents the volume’s battles from carrying much weight. The personal struggles, outside of conflicts with Khalid’s schooling, are pretty weak.

Overall: This is a volume with an even split of ups and downs. It tells a few exciting stories about a fun superhero but none of the stories stand out as anything that memorable. It also builds on struggles in Doctor Fate’s personal life, yet leaves most of these personal struggles feeling pretty shallow. In the end, this book is mostly average but may still appeal to readers who enjoy seeing a young hero attempt to balance heroics with an education.

Story

Doctor Fate Vol. 2: Prisoners of the Past, by Paul Levitz, mostly continues the mixed level of quality found in the previous book. This volume features some fun battles that are contrasted against the struggles within the new Doctor Fate’s personal life. However, these battles are too quick to carry the weight they should and the majority of the personal struggles remain rather shallow. This mix of positives and negatives creates a book of average quality but one that may still appeal to readers looking for stories about a hero torn between his education and his newfound career as a crimefighter.

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Prisoners of the Past is a relatively short volume that primarily focuses on quick adventures starring the new Doctor Fate. These adventures typically have him tackle some supernatural force that is currently threatening the lives of ordinary people. They are moderately exciting and have an affinity for Egyptian mythology that helps them stand apart from other comics out there.

However, these adventures are also relatively unexciting and suffer from their brevity. None of the villains here receive any setup and all are dealt with in only a chapter or two. Even Anubis, the main villain from the previous volume, returns only to be dispatched in a few pages. Having a low-stakes fight here and there is alright but the lack of any worthwhile villain and the lack of any worthwhile villain being built in the background causes this book to be less interesting than it could have been.

Where the book starts to redeem itself is in the characters. Khalid’s struggle in balancing his regular life with his life as a superhero feels like a modern take on the formula that made Spider-Man the hit he is today. This book made me want to see more from Khalid and all of the other characters in his life.

Yet even this feature of the book is not as positive as it could have been. Outside of Khalid’s struggle between school and superheroics, the rest of this book’s personal struggles felt relatively shallow. Prisoners of the Past scrapes the surface on the issues facing a child brought up with two different religions, youthful political action, and romantic troubles but doesn’t explore any of these factors with enough gusto.

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Art

Prisoners of the Past brings back the unique visual stylings of the first volume in this series. Sonny Liew returns with visuals that look unique and suit the equally unique nature of Doctor Fate. These visuals have a stylized charm to them that helps this comic stand on its own in more ways than one. Plus, this volume also contains an impressive opening chapter by Ibrahim Moustafa. The downside is that this volume contains less visually impressive splash pages, which were a big part of the first volume’s appeal. Overall, this creates a book with decent artwork but without much that will seriously impress.