Headlights galore on the cover of TROUBLE #1.
© 2003 Marvel Characters Inc.

Mania Grade: B-
Authors: Mark Millar, Terry Dodson, Rachel Dodson
Publisher: Marvel/Epic
Price: $2.99

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TROUBLE (SECOND EDITION) #1 (of 5)

May and Mary are two teenaged girls headed for the Hamptons for a fun-filled summer...waiting tables at the local posh resort. They're hoping to meet some hot guys to make the summer even warmer, but the resort has a strict policy against fraternization. After meeting Ben and Richard, though, how can they let a little thing like the rules get in the way?

There are two reasons why this review of TROUBLE #1, the first series from Marvel's "new" Epic imprint, is so late: 1) I didn't have much interest in it, despite (or in my case, because of) the cover; and 2) I couldn't get hold of a copy of the "swimsuit" edition when it first came out. Luckily, Marvel has graciously reprinted the first issue for those of us who might have been interested in something other than the cover. Somehow, I don't think this second edition's going to sell like proverbial hotcakes, like the first edition did.

It's no real fault of the script, though if Mark Millar's name weren't both on the cover and in the indicia inside, I'd never have known it was his work. In one way, though, that lack of any telltale characteristics could be considered a plus - the old "love story" comics that once dominated both Marvel and DC's outputs were written in such a way that no one would have known that the likes of Bob Kanigher or Stan Lee were the scribes behind them. If you were reading a story about two teenaged girls meeting two teenaged guys, would you really want to be able to tell that the writer had also written SGT. ROCK? Or WHERE CREATURES ROAM? Or THE ULTIMATES?

It's still surprising that this script has very little of the wit and brilliance that normally permeates a Millar work in every single word. Occasionally such moments will sneak in - the scene in which May writes her one and only diary entry about why people write diaries rather than going out and living has Millar's fingerprints all over it - but the rest is standard teen love story fodder. While it's not a bad script, it's not necessarily all that different from reading the script of the first episode of some mid-season replacement series on the WB. Again, given the genre Millar's writing in, that may not be such a bad thing.

Another element that makes TROUBLE so...um, troublesome is the artwork. The Dodsons' work is neither phenomenal nor horrific - it simply sits there, occasionally teetering over the edge of outright boredom into silliness. The word "generic" was invented for art like this - and yet again, perhaps this is a good thing, since none of the love story comics back in the 50s, 60s, or early 70s had anything close to what we would now consider "standout" artwork. Perhaps doing anything more memorable in this genre would violate the standards of the genre - as with Harlequin Romances, we're reading them for the formula and variations on a theme, not for innovation.

I'm sure that, much like mine, your mind is probably clicking over on the fact that one of the couples is named Ben and May. If this comic were set in the same time frame as ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN, we're all thinking, then these two could very well be the famous Uncle Ben and Aunt May in their more halcyon days. But such thoughts only show just how little intrinsic interest we must have in the story Millar gives us. The fact that we're looking for hidden ties between a love story and the "regular" Marvel Universe's epic of superheroes and supervillains means we're looking for some meaning to impose on the script - which implies there's not much meaning here to begin with. Oh, well...at least the cover's nice. If you got the right one. Or so I'm told.