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Millennium #1

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    Ian Jane
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  • Millennium #1



    Millennium #1
    Released by: IDW Publishing
    Released on: January 21st, 2015.
    Written by: Joe Harris
    Illustrated by: Colin Lorimer
    Purchase From Amazon

    It's been a while but Frank Black is back. But we're going to need a refresher, right?

    “Previously on Millennium… With his unique ability to see into the minds of killers, profiler Frank Black left the FBI to join the Millennium Group, a covert team of former law enforcement experts battling the growing forces of evil in the world—or so he thought. The Group actually was bent on bringing about the apocalypse, and to that end became responsible for the death of Frank's wife, Catherine. Eventually, the Millennium Group dissolved, and Frank and his daughter, Jordan—who shares his gift—became estranged.”

    So there you go. This new series, written by Joe Harris and illustrated by Colin Lorimer, starts in New York City in 1999. It's Christmas Eve and a woman named Abby lets two men into the room where an office party is going down. These men are here to work on the servers - Abby asks them if this 'Y2K thing is real.' She leaves them to their work and goes back to the merry making. The two men talk about the state of the world, the lack of innocence in modern times and how nobody expects anything to really happen. The make a toast, and the device that the put into the computer room? It starts beeping…

    Cut to the present day inside a federal prison facility in Terre Haute, Indiana. Here Agent Mulder is talking about his experiences working a case referred to as the Black Lake Murders back in the late eighties and the subsequent conviction of a Mr. Propps, a serial killer whose methods involved occult practices. He'd keep his victims captive in a well in the remote hills of Oregon and once he released them, they'd been 'turned' - conditioned to 'connect' and 'sympathize' with Monte Propps, not unlike someone afflicted with Stockholm Syndrome. After they were freed, for reason Mulder can't explain, the victims would drown themselves in a river near Propps' cabin.

    Propps is up for early release on this day. Mulder protests it but the committee notes how Propps was never convicted of murdering his victims and how he's been nothing but a model prisoner since his incarceration began. Shortly after, the lights in the room go out. When Mulder leaves, he sees a familiar signature in the register, one belonging to Frank Black. From here we head to a rundown motel where Black is staying. Newspapers are scattered everywhere and he flashes back to the era of the Black Lake Murders. Mulder arrives and they talk. Black has essentially gone off the grid. Black warns Mulder of the dark forces that are at work in the world, forces that Propps has a connection to. He tells him that the Millennium Group is no more but Black, he still has those flashbacks. Mulder tells him that Propps was let out of prison earlier that day…

    While teaming Frank Black up with Agent Mulder might seem unnecessary this early on in Millennium's comic book return, when the story is told as well as it is here the obvious commercial appeal of a crossover is easy to overlook. Harris has set into motion the makings of a great mystery, one that we definitely want to know more about and one that feels completely in keeping with the dark tone of the TV series that inspired all of this. This is definitely a Millennium story, not an X-Files story, Mulder's presence is tied into the story properly though and it's interesting to speculate about how this may or may not affect the future of both he and Black. So yeah, there's some nice suspense here, some creepy moments and a great ending that keeps us wanting more. This new series is off to an excellent start.

    As far as the artwork goes, Colin Lorimer does fine work here. Mulder and Black are recognizable enough but given his own spin in that they don't just look like carbon copies of their television selves. His style favors heavy black line work so we get some nice shadowy images but not necessarily at the sacrifice of depth and detail to the panel layouts. The coloring from Joana Lafuente works very well with Lorimers art, never getting to bright or brush but instead using a slightly more muted, subtle color palette to appropriately dark and completely in keeping with the tone of Harris' story.

    Frank Black has been away too long, it's nice to have him back. We're off to a great start with this first issue, let's hope the creative team can keep up this level of quality throughout.






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