Cloak and Dagger: Guest Review by Simon Breeze

Last weekend, while at the Bristol International Comic & Small Press Expo, I had the pleasure of meeting-up and sharing a very quick lunch with locally-based writer and artist Simon Breeze. Over our lunch Simon was able to bring me up to speed on his ongoing projects - including his work on his comic The Doorway - as well as talk about the success of the Doctor Who story that he wrote and illustrated, Doctor Who and the Edge of Forever, which has been published at Myebook and viewed an incredible 26,000 times in just nine months.

Once again, I'm indebted to Simon for his ongoing contributions to Escape from Tomorrow ...

Cloak and Dagger: The Broken Church

This Marvel One-Shot is set in the world of the ever-popular X-Men, so as a reader of the X-Men the two characters came as a bit of a surprise. Now, I might just being a bit naïve, the X-Men universe is a huge place spanning many years and media platforms, you just can’t keep up with it all and I take my hat off to those that do. It was a pleasant surprise; no scrub that, a brilliant surprise when I started to read this book none the less, the two new characters (well new to me) are very easy to like and in a way relate too.

The story follows what at first appears to be a simple enough plot, Dagger (Tandy Bowen) and Cloak (Tyrone Johnson) are ‘in’ with the X-Men, Dagger is introduced to us via a training scenario in the Danger Room as part of a team of X-Men students for example. We very quickly learn that their powers are not from the mutant X gene, neither are mutants, which upset Dagger a great deal.

From this point on the story expands very quickly to reveal the symbiotic relationship between the two characters of Cloak and Dagger and their feelings of isolation and their struggle to just fit in, be with mutants or humans alike. Interwoven with this story thread is a plot about a group that is brainwashing mutants Clock Work Orange style to not use their powers. Chuck in a few relationship issues, a fight, Dagger wearing a costume that makes Power Girls look like the most practical one ever designed and a bit of a tear-jerker ending and you have your One Shot.

And what a One Shot it is, the art is breath taking, the page layouts are effortless to follow, the story hooks you in right away, the characters are likeable, the lettering is brilliant and Wolverine does not appear in this issue. I would really enjoy reading more about these two and finding out how things work out for them, so more please Marvel if you don’t mind.

I give this One Shot a solid 5 out of 5, with the vaguest knowledge of the X-Men you can pick this up and really enjoy it, and it left me wanting more, so what more can you ask for?

By the way, my Wolverine comment, I love the character and it was my way of saying, it was refreshing to read an X-Men centric comic that he didn’t make an appearance in, not even in the background.

Cloak and Dagger: The Broken Church
Story by Stuart Moore with pencils by Mark Brooks, inks by Walden Wong, colours by Emily Warren and lettered by Dave Sharpe
Published by Marvel Comics


Like Simon, I thought Cloak and Dagger was an excellent read: I'm not sure of Marvels plans for further Cloak and Dagger stories but I'd be very keen to read more.