THE ORIGINAL SERIES THAT STARTED IT ALL!

Those words, prominently displayed at the top of the back cover on each of these volumes, led me to believe that there was something great happening here. But, while something led Image -- often a good source of comic-book material -- to pick up this independent series and reprint its early issues, the careful reader should not believe the hype.

Deity -- the meaning of the title will never become clear within the six issues collected here -- is about a massive galactic war between good and evil. It's also about Jamie, a girl in high school in a near-future Earth who is worried primarily about dancing and boys. The galactic bad guys want to kill her, while the good guys -- with the assistance of some Earth-bound, ass-kicking, martial-arts monks and a shape-shifting dragon -- want to save her life. For "reasons," each side in the war can only send a handful of agents to Earth.

Of course, no one wants to tell her who she is or why aliens are after her, and that extends to the readers, who only know that she's "destined" to inherit some great power from the young, beautiful but apparently dying galactic queen.

All the while, Jamie delivers Chinese food for her uncle, frets about her drug-using pal and flirts with an annoying jerk whose flaws can be overlooked because he's cute. Oh, and at the end Jamie's stuffed cat comes to life.

I found no real enjoyment in this mess of a series. The art is good, if fairly standard, and the book covers would lead most readers to think it's a collection of teen romance stories, not a bloody space opera. All in all, I was bored, so at least the books are short.