DC Comics
Writer: Bill Willingham
Artist/Cover: Phil Winslade

A young kid, tormented and bullied in high school because of his (nerdiness/ethnic background/Marilyn Manson T-shirt and white pancake make-up), discovers a (magic artifact/radioactive spider/mail-order gun store), and becomes a (wizard/superhero/tired media-created goth cliché). This story line is older than both Shazam! and Peter Parker. In fact it's probably older than comic books, the written word, and the phrase 'hooker with a heart of gold" combined. But yet, here it is again, in the form of The Helmet of Fate: Ibis The Invincible #1.

Danny Khalifa, the son of Egyptian immigrants, is beaten daily after school for the crime of being an Arab in American after September 11th. So, because the comic gods have a sense of empathy and poetic justice, they make him the personification of ancient Egyptian deity Ibis, so he can show us all that if you beat up ethnic kids, they will use weird pagan witch-magic against you. As Ibis, Danny's first mission is to save the Helmet of Fate from Set, which he accomplishes handily, and that's essentially the plot of the book. Writer Tad Williams, known primary as a fantasy novelist, doesn't make much of an effort to rise about the stock plot, aside from the 9/11 updates, and his alternating between omniscient narration and interior monologue has a tendency to get muddled and confusing. He does have a knack for dialogue, and Danny's interaction with god of Wisdom Thoth is amusing, but on the whole, the book feels inconsequential and insignificant.

Artist Phil Winslade draws a fine baboon god, and he's got a great sense of depth and shading, making his grand palaces of the afterworld imposing and awe-inspiring. However, the faces of his characters look a little haggard, though they communicate expression well. The panel layouts are symmetrical, which keeps the book on an even keel, but all in all, while Winslade's art is capable, there's nothing here to distinguish the book from all the other stories that have followed its well-worn path.

Rating: 5 on 10.

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