Witchblade: Shades of Gray is the February-debuting first four-issue series under this deal and will pit Top Cow’s flagship franchise against a character inspired by literally creation Dorian Gray, he of Oscar Wilde’s novel The Portrait of Dorian Gray.
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In the first issue, we follow Detective Sara Pezzini and her new rookie partner as they race to stop a murdering madman. Waiting and watching in the shadows is the enigmatic Gray who may or may not be the murderer they seek! With the action spanning the globe as well as exploring Gray’s coloured past, this is an event not to be missed!
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’Gray’ has the potential to be a great tragic character, one we’ve been looking to introduce for some time now.
Top Cow… Dynamite… Oscar Wilde? My brain fails me. A fable about youth, morality and vanity crossed with a T&A superhero book? Dorian Gray as a “tragic character?” Dorian Gray is an amoral, self-obsessed asshole. He’s not even evil or misunderstood; he’s just a bastard.
Also, he died at the end of his book, though that’s pretty low on the list of things that are wrong with this. There are some interesting things one could do with Dorian, but Top Cow promises to do very little (read: none) of them.
I’m also not sure how it constitutes a “crossover” between Dynamite and Top Cow: Dynamite doesn’t own Dorian Gray, nor do they even have licensing rights – the character is public domain, as far as I know. So what is Dynamite bringing to the table? 15 variant covers? At least the character lends itself to that sort of thing…
Egads. Just… what the fuck, man?