Unique

by Dean Motter, Dennis Calero

By Dean Motter

54 pages, Hardcover

First published October 1, 2007

About the author

Dean R. Motter is an illustrator, designer and writer who worked for many years in Toronto, Canada, New York City, and Atlanta. Motter is best known as the creator and designer of Mister X, one of the most influential "new-wave" comics of the 1980s.

Dean then took up the Creative Services Art Director's post at Time Warner/DC Comics, where he oversaw the corporate and licensing designs of America’s most beloved comic book characters such as Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman. In his off-hours he went on to create and design the highly acclaimed, retro-futuristic comic book series, Terminal City-- and its sequels, Aerial Graffiti. and Electropolis.

Reviews

[Graham · Rating 3 out of 5]

Decent ideas, mediocre execution, confusing artwork

[Tim Stringer · Rating 2 out of 5]

The artwork is nice. The idea is nice. That’s about it.

[Nick · Rating 2 out of 5]

While the thriller part of the story worked fairly well, the parallel universe part was really ill-conceived, and anyone who reads a lot of SF using such motifs will find it seriously flawed.
Okay, the idea is that parallel worlds exist, and that with effort some people can travel to ones close to their own. That's an SF cliche, and is okay if you realize that it's just a starting point for a story. The problem in this story is that the two worlds diverged thousands of years ago, and shouldn't be even CLOSE in terms of culture and development, because of WHY they diverged. The cause shown would have affected everything from population density to art to agriculture to science and technology. In the terminology of the story, most of the populations should be "uniques" in that they would not have exact counterparts on the other world.
Even ignoring that problem, the storytelling style is very rushed. This book reads very much as if the book was intended as a storyboard to pitch a movie based on this story. Fleshed out and thought through a little better, it might make a good movie, but it did not make a good graphic novel.

[Elizabeth Olson · Rating 3 out of 5]

The not-that-unique plot (baddies have framed the now on-the-run protagonist, who must be alert to constantly shifting threats) is enlivened by the twist of travel between parallel universes, sometimes voluntarily and sometimes disorientingly unexpected. Nicely paired with moody next-century noir illustrations, the book plays like an entertaining thriller movie.

[Andrew · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm a big fan of Dean Motter. This mini-series is a bit peculiar though. It's got some really interesting ideas in it, but (for me) it didn't really come together.