Red Herring (Issue 1)

WildStorm/DC

Written by David Tischman; Art by Phillip Bond and David Hahn

Aug 21, 2009 Web Exclusive By Kyle Lemmon

One goal of Red Herring‘s first issue is to link Maggie MacGuffin with male lead, the titular Teddy “Red” Herring. As protagonists, they’re polar opposites. They pretty much only share their names, which reference literary deadlocks. The comical sci-fi miniseries is written by David Tischman (Bite Club, Greatest Hits), with art by Philip Bond (Grant Morrison’s Kill Your Boyfriend, Vimanarama) and David Hahn (Fables, Marvel Adventures: Fantastic Four). The farcical, conspiracy theory-loving tale was described by Tischman as “The X-Files meets The Daily Show,” and that’s about right. For a comic book set against the backdrop of Washington, D.C., it’s often sexy, humorous and dense. This largely stems from the two leads. MacGuffin is a hubristic congressman’s aide who sleeps around. Herring is a government agent who lies, and, like Agent Mulder, he’s a sucker for conspiracy theories.

Both unwittingly get embroiled with dudes in dark glasses from The Capricorn Group and shady political deals that all point towards little green men and a small town you may of heard of named Roswell. Overall, Red Herring sounds ho-hum plotwise but Tischman’s snappy execution is often quite charming. Philip Bond’s cartoony, yet realistic pencil work is very fitting for the light fare. Sometimes the witty one-liners (McGuffin has the best) are weighted down by too many puzzling plot twists. Moving forward, Tischman has plans to make Red Herring a series of miniseries and the conspiratorial elements lends themselves to a longer set of stories. (www.dccomics.com/wildstorm)

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