Hoax Hunters #0

Written by Michael Moreci and Steve Seeley
Art by JM Ringuet
32 pages, color
Published by Image Comics

I hadn’t heard of Hoax Hunters until this special was released; originally it ran as a back-up feature in the pages of Hack/Slash. With an ongoing series planned to debut shortly, though, this was clearly meant as a way for people like myself to become familiar with the comic, and hopefully get interested. And while there are parts of Hoax Hunters that didn’t entirely work for me, there’s enough good material here that I feel like that mission has been accomplished.

The basic concept behind Hoax Hunters is easy to grasp; the three leads of a Mythbusters-type show travel the world, stomping down hoaxes of supernatural events that can be explained through science. What Regan, Ken, and Jack aren’t telling their viewers, though, is that they themselves are living proof that it’s all real and that their show is instead designed to disguise the truth from their viewers.

Because Hoax Hunters #0 was originally a back-up serial,I was willing to give it a little bit of slack in terms of overall flow for the writing. As it turned out, I didn’t need to; if I hadn’t read that it was originally served up in small two- and three-page installments, I would never have known. Michael Moreci and Steve Seeley have a good core concept here, and while I don’t feel like I necessarily know the three characters that well by the time the issue is over, I’m willing to forgive that for now. Once it goes to series, hopefully they’ll get fleshed out a bit. (Poor Jack’s name isn’t even mentioned until the second-to-last page.) There’s clearly a lot more in Moreci’s and Seeley’s heads than makes it to the page, and I’m looking forward to them having the space in which to lay it out for us.

While most of the plotting worked well for me—the team’s pursuit of the oddities happening in Russia is methodical and follows a careful chain of events—the one part that fell flat for me was the conclusion, which appears to happen regardless of the main characters being there or not. They end up being more of observers than protagonists, and that’s the weak spot in Hoax Hunters #0. It’s the one part that jumped out at me as absolutely needing to be fixed for future installments, or I think Hoax Hunters will risk losing its audience.

JM Ringuet is the artist for Hoax Hunters #0, although he’s since left the comic and been replaced for the ongoing series around the corner. Ringuet’s art is nice, if a little rough in spots. The best parts for me are every time the crows show up; Ringuet draws them with a mixture of menace and mystery, and their presence on the page is always instantly noticeable. The characters themselves have an angular nature to them; for the most part, that works, unless the panel is crowded. At that point, it feels more like a jumble because of those hard edges; fortunately, it doesn’t happen that often. There are some nice little touches here and there too, like the strange characters that appear when Regan uses her powers, or Ringuet using the astronaut helmet as a panel border for the flashback explaining what happened to cause all of the strangeness in Russia.

Hoax Hunters #0 is a nice introduction to the series, and I feel like it’s given itself enough room to expand and grow once we get issues on a more regular basis. For now, consider myself interested. There are a lot of places for Hoax Hunters to go from here, and I’ll be curious to see firsthand how it pans out.