Let’s talk about the main characters first. Katie McAllister and Mike Stuart are detectives in the Chicago police force. Katie is the impulsive hothead and Mike is the stay-cool type. By the conversations they have, it appears that Katie is more-often-than-not causing the two of them trouble. Apparently, she was promoted to detective very quickly, so she’s a pretty sharp gal. Mike, of course, is just as smart but has other resources due to his past. I wouldn’t go so far as to say these are totally original characters but they aren’t all cookie-cutter archetypes either. We get little bits of information about them as the story progresses. We’ll get to the story in just a second. Before that, let’s talk about the art.

As you can see, the drawing is fantastic. Except for the chapter covers, it is all black and white with grey tones. There is excellent, well researched background detail in all the panels. I can tell you that it takes a long time to draw a citiscape like this, especially with good photo reference. Paradigm’s art is based on real places in Chicago, so there’s an air of realism added.

There is a street map page where you can zoom in and see where a certain event happened. The neighborhoods are color coded and the crimes are pinpointed with thumbtacks. It’s a fun prop that adds to the police procedural side of the story.

Ah yes. The story. I prefer to let you, as the reader, discover the bigger reveals for yourself. By now I’m sure you’ve read a number of the other reviews and they’ve spilled the beans about a werewolf or maybe a werelion. I really don’t care for stories about werewolves, so it’s the rest of the story that held my little bit of interest. You may like the fact that Katie is having very disturbing dreams about being a werewolf but it’s just overdone to me.

I can summarize it by saying that Paradigm is partly a police-procedural type of story. These two detectives are doing their bully-the-criminal things when they get wrapped up in something far bigger than running guns or selling crack. They are a little better than the standard cop, so they react quicker and smarter and things don’t dead end as fast as they would otherwise.

As you might expect in a werewolf story, there is also evidence at the crime scenes that doesn’t add up to a normal crime. It felt a little weak to me but that might be because I’ve been watching House on dvd lately. There might be forty seven ailments that could produce wierd hairs, for instance. They leave that plot-clue hanging for pretty much the entire run of Paradigm so far.

That strikes me as odd, because the storytelling itself is pretty crisp with good pacing and action. Any other plot-clue has been mentioned and then let go until the moment to reveal. Wierd werewolf hairs defying easy classification stands out to me like something that should have been glossed over with a seemingly-at-the-time reasonable excuse and left until solved. A good counter example is how Katie throws up at a grisly crime scene and the Coroner sends her away and collects samples of the vomit. That part is done very subtly and will play itself out later, I’m sure.

Actually, maybe that’s not a good example. Please, ignore the fact that vomitting at crime scenes is totally, totally out of character for her and the others let it go without more than a murmur. Never mind that by this time she’s been shot in the gut and hospitalized, shot point blank in the chest, banged her head and blacked out, keeps having waking hallucinations, can’t sleep well and has been out drinking after work. All in the last two or three days.

I know. It’s a comic. No one really flies and animals don’t talk and the Flintstones couldn’t walk their car one foot forward. It’s just that you see examples where Mike quotes something like ‘bend to the wind’ and it comes up a page or two later when Katie has something difficult to deal with. It makes sense and it comes together at the right time. So maybe I’m jumping the gun and it’ll all come together later.

One last thing. Paradigm has that police procedural sort of setting. You expect very witty dialogue that pushes your point of view around, sort of like “oh, I hadn’t thought about it that way.” Paradigm is almost there with certain lines being perfectly delivered. I’d just like to have seen it a little more often.

That may leave you with the impression that I didn’t like the comic. Aside from the werewolf thing and the inconsistencies it introduces, Paradigm actually has a solid story told very well. You’ll probably enjoy it just fine. You’ll want to start reading it here, at the beginning. [ratings: 3.5]

Paradigm Shift
by Dirk Tiede
http://www.webcomicsnation.com/dirktiede/ps/series.php
review by Delos Woodruff
(3 votes, average: 4.67 out of 5)

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