Péigenz

    (ComicsOne, 2004-2005)
™ and © 2002 Park Sung Woo

Lots of Christian iconography and grainy photos of New York City are used to set the stage for this thin, muddled mélange of X-Men and X-Files that manages to include both mutants and zombies.

When innocent high-school girl Jay Berell is dragged kicking and screaming into a war between good and evil, she’s saved from the latter by one of the former, the rugged (in a Keanu Reeves kind of way) Pairon, agent of Peigenz (the definition of the word defies all available dictionaries).

Now sporting vague para-powers of her own, Jay becomes a field agent herself and helps Pairon hunt down the deadly mutant Quasar. While it does have a refreshing street-level supernatural feel, the art is just a bit too simple to carry off the intended oppressively dark mood. Moreover, Peigenz is too indefinite for its own good: Mysteries are nice, but, by the end of Vol. 1, readers only have the haziest idea of who the characters are, what they can do, and why they fight.

— S.A. Bennett
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