Pages

Saturday 17 September 2016

Bloodshot Reborn, Volume 2: The Hunt Review (Jeff Lemire, Butch Guice)


Bloodshot continues to hunt down the remaining nanites that have infected some unwitting human hosts - until he realises there’s another out there also hunting the remaining infected in an effort to become Bloodshot themselves! 

Jeff Lemire concludes his first Bloodshot arc in a reasonably satisfactory fashion even if he’s basically retelling the first Jason Bourne movie, The Bourne Identity. You’ve got a super soldier with amnesia and a cute female sidekick hunting down others like him while being pursued by the authorities - there’s even a shootout in a field like in the movie! 

I didn’t think much of Magic, the female sidekick, or the creepy kid in the first book but their inclusion in the story both pay off nicely in this book. What doesn’t pay off at all is the continued FBI agent storyline which went nowhere and was totally unnecessary - you could excise it entirely and the story wouldn’t suffer. It’d be an improvement in fact as it wasn’t interesting to read either! 

And I’m still not sure how these nanites selected their hosts or where they went after The Valiant. And why is it Bloodshot is only now having hallucinations of Kay and Bloodsquirt when the last time he was Bloodshot he didn’t? Contrived nonsense. 

Butch Guice’s realistic art works well with the horror look of the infected, particularly the one in the field - this series has had an impressive array of artistic talent! 

Bloodshot Reborn, Volume 2: The Hunt is a decent finale though the storyline had its flaws. Well done to both Jeff Lemire and Bloodshot for not totally sucking! This might be Valiant’s best current ongoing (though that’s not saying much).

No comments:

Post a Comment