Dr. Mirage is a take on how talking to ghosts and the boundaries between life and death are about love more than anything else. Death is a very uneasy thing to live with. For many it is a means of remembering everything about the people they love. For others it is a symptom of afflictions that can be treated or reversed. The problem is people don't know much about how and when people die. People can argue that because of this mesmeric state, it's not meant to be understood. But for Shan Mirage,

I love a good graphic novel, then throw in one truly epic cover and one of the most wild descriptions I've heard in a long time... You've got me hooked! I also used to have a strong fondness for Valiant, so that made me want to read it even more.Shan Fong Mirage is a famous paranormal investigator. She used to see the dead, and now she doesn't. She's finally alone for the first time in her life. Then a sixteen year old walks into her life and announces that she too can see the dead... Will she f...

Doctor Mirage's first two mini-series are some of my favourite Valiant fare, so I'm glad that her next appearance is almost as good, if not quite. Mags Visaggio takes poor Shan on a horrible journey through the Deadside and into the realm of the Egyptian Gods on a quest to restore her lost ghost sight so that she can see her husband again, but in the process learns something important about herself and potentially unleashes hell itself.Shan's adventures get very Silver Age Doctor Strange up in h...

Created by Bob Layton and Bernard Chang in 1993, the original version of Doctor Mirage was a male paranormal investigator who worked alongside his wife and possesses black magic, specifically called “Darque Power”. When Valiant rebooted the character a few years ago, Mirage became a woman with similar origins who seeks to restore her ghostly husband, Hwen. This new limited series by Magdalene Visaggio and Nick Robles is a great opener for anyone wanting to learn about this superhero, who is all

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher I was able to read this book in exchange for an honest review.***Doctor Shan Fong Mirage is a woman that can see the dead, and has up to this point been able to see her departed husband, Hwen, who has always been with her. All of a sudden she can not only “not” see him, but any dead people, period. After a failed attempt to see the dead again, particularly Hwen, a strange girl shows up at her supposed to be impossible to see/find home and tells Shan that she...

Dr. Mirage used to have a reality TV show where she and her husband would chase ghosts. Her husband, Hwen, knew magic and she could speak with ghosts. Hwen died on a case and now appears to Dr. Mirage as a ghost. That's the gist of the previous miniseries.Dr. Mirage has now lost the ability to see ghosts including her husband. She's visited by a teenager who informs her she's in hell. What follows is a bunch of surreal, psychedelic trips through a dreamscape. It's difficult to generate much exci...

Valiant's non-comedy books generally have a faint whiff of 'we've got superheroes at home', with which the wider world is likely to become more familiar once Bloodshot finally squelches on to the cinema screens come March. But starting from that admittedly low bar, this one is definitely better than most, not least thanks to the fabulous, trippy visuals from Nick Robles and Jordie Bellaire*, who at times make this look almost like an art deco Brendan McCarthy. I know nothing about any previous v...

I was wondering why I didn't get half of what's going on, I should have checked if it was first in the series or not. I honestly thought it was a standalone from the title.Regardless of me not having read the previous volumes, I enjoyed the art style a lot. The story was good but a bit on the cliche and predictable side.Thank you Netgalley for providing me with the digital copy for an honest review.

An exploration of the mysteries inherent in both life and death as experienced by Dr Mirage—a paranormal detective with the unique ability to communicate with the deceased.

Nice to Have the Doctor BackThis was an engaging reboot of Doctor Mirage, set in a Dante's Inferno frame that suited her very well. This time around Mirage/Dante is guided by a snarky teenage girl instead of the Roman poet Virgil, and I thought that marked quite an improvement.The set up is that Doctor Mirage can't see ghosts any more and can't communicate with her dead husband Hwen. Something is very much amiss. Our teen guide arrives to advise Mirage that she can't get into Hell because she's

I received a copy of Doctor Mirage through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and honest review. Valiant has once again given the lovely Doctor Mirage her own solo series. Honestly, I couldn’t have been more excited about this news, as she’s one of my favorite characters to come from that corner of the market (which is saying something, since I also adore Faith). Doctor Mirage, aka Shan Fong, has always had the most unusual talent – the ability to see ghosts. Her story is more heartbreaking and en...

I admit to requesting this book based solely on the cover alone. The name "Doctor Mirage" rang a small bell but I actually haven't read superhero comics, so I can't speak to how differently or how well her character is portrayed in this new comic compared to previous ones. I will say that I enjoyed the story though!I loved the illustration style and the color palette of the comic. The artwork has a modernised vintage feel to it that reminds me of all the superhero comics that I never read but al...

Suddenly, Doctor Mirage can't see ghosts anymore. To fix this problem, she attempts a ritual that destroys parts of her house - and then a girl knocks, seeing her despite being heavily concealed with magic.I don't know anything about this character or this series, and I think that this volume is a good introduction. You get to know who she is, what she can do, what her priorities are. The pacing is good, the colourful illustrations are beautiful. The hieroglyphs are real, but I am too tired to d...

Not my favorite. I'm still not sure what was real and what was in her head, but I don't want to spoil this for anyone who wants to read it, so I can't say much more. And most people seemed to like this, so I'm probably in the minority.Honestly, I'd just as soon forget this as some weird one-off and consider Jen Van Meter's Second Lives the end of my Doctor Mirage experience for now.But I do love the characters, so I'm sure I'll be back for more.

'Doctor Mirage' by Magdalene Visaggio with art by Nick Robles is a graphic novel about the paranormal detective who can see the dead, including her dead husband.Except now she can't. Try as she might, Doctor Mirage has lost the ability to see the dead, until a young girl named Grace comes along and offers to help. Grace tells Doctor Mirage that she has been sent to help, but that they might be dead and don't actually know it. Can Doctor Mirage find out the truth, and can she restore her connecti...

Doctor Mirage is a new volume on the Valiant character collecting issues one to five of the mini-series soft-rebooting, in a self contained story, the character who already got a mini-series treatment in 2014 and other appearances. Writer Magdalene Visaggio is at the helm with artist Nick Robles, colorist Jordie Bellaire (who worked on the acclaimed Vision mini).Shan Fong Mirage has the power to communicate with the dead (including her late husband), and acts as a paranormal investigator. The se...

I haven't read many of the new Valiant Universe books, and only know the most recent incarnation of Doctor Mirage from her appearance in Faith: Dreamside. In this volume, she's pulling a Morpheus, traveling to hell to bring back her dead husband. Previously, she could see his ghost, but now he has disappeared. With the help of a teenage girl who claims to see dead people and some ancient magic, Mirage hopes to return him to life. Things go awry, of course, but not in a particularly interesting m...

Shan Fong-Mirage has a really bad habit of screwing around with facets of the phantasmagoric of which she has no genuine understanding. It's how she accrues her knowledge. It's how she accrues her sense of renowned. It's how she communicates with the dead. It's also how she loses her husband.DOCTOR MIRAGE #3 finds Shan in a difficult spot. After scrounging through the Turkish underground for yet further tools of lost civilizations to resurrect her husband, Li Hwen Mirage, things go south. After

I didn't know that Doctor Mirage has other comic series before this 2019 limited series, until after I've finished the volume, so I didn't know any of the character's backstory.Doctor mirage is a woman who can use magic and can see and talk to dead people (actually in this series she loses this last ability). She has lost her husband recently and tries, via magic used by an ancient Egyptian cult, to travel to hell and bring him back. The plot although simple, it is presented in such a way that i...

Disclaimer: I received a free ecopy via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.There is something about Doctor Mirage that I really enjoy. She is a play on the TV psychic stereotype that claim they can speak with the dead, but Mirage can actually do it. This story picks up at a point where she has lost the ability to see/speak with the dead and she is trying to reclaim that power, so that she can reconnect with her husband who passed away a few years ago. A young woman seeks out Mirage and t...