Enigma

(Vertigo, 1993)
™ and ©1992 Peter Milligan and Duncan Fegredo

When Michael Smith was a boy, his father died. His mother, whose life had become chaotic, tried to fight the world’s disorder by inventing rules for everything. And Michael, who didn’t know what to make of it all, sought refuge in a comic book called Enigma. He read the comic furiously, feeling like the story was somehow his own. One day, his mother told him to be a good boy, said she’d be back soon, and left him on a corner reading his favorite comic. Michael never saw his mother again.

Today Michael has grown into a man. He has too many rules for everything, a girlfriend who cheats on him, and the characters from his favorite childhood comic book are coming to life, in devilish, demented form. There’s the Head, who inhales the brains of its victims in order to enjoy their memories; the Truth, who destroys people by stripping them of the illusions that make their lives tolerable; and the Enigma, who remains just that…

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