Written By: Jeff Lemire

Art By: Mico Suayan

Color Art By: David Baron

Coming off the heels of The Analog Man storyline, Bloodshot enters a new status quo this week with Bloodshot Island. With the major comic superhero companies in a seemingly endless stage of flux, Valiant continues to churn out quality superhero comics month in and month out with much the same creative drivers. I always come in with high expectations with Lemire, and with Bloodshot, he always pays off.

Right off the bat, this current situation for Bloodshot spins completely out of the last arc, so while you could jump on at this point, it would serve best to read the last arc first. This issue was mostly set up, as Bloodshot gets used to his new surroundings. He discovers he’s stranded on a closed off island, with the only people he runs into being other nanite infused people and animals, affectionately having names with shot or blood in them. y, we are introduced to the big bad of this story, Deathmate, who is a pretty interestingly designed and terrifying character. With Bloodshot saying he recognizes something in Deathmate, and the final page reveal showing us where the story is going, Lemire has created another compelling arc for Rey. Since this was quite sparse in terms of really going into the character; even though we are introduced to them, I’m sure the future issues will delve a little deeper into them, or into Bloodshot himself. Lemire has been keeping these stories moving at a quick pace, with the emotional tugging that he’s known for, so there’s no reason to expect a dropoff. Also, as I said before: the heroes we know and love from other companies are in a weird state right now, whether off a reboot or in a new event. Bloodshot, however, is constant in terms of tone and quality, and feels like old school superhero stories. Lemire is working well in this tightly constructed world.

This arc also saw the return of Mico Suayan on art duties. In the past, I was a little critical of Suayan in terms of his hyper detailed style being stiff at points. While there were a few odd panels here and there that were a little posey or cold, overall I feel that this is the best fit for him story wise. He establishes the island as an intensely gritty and almost grinding place, just overall uncomfortable. Also, his rendering style is still beautiful. The hyper detailed character work, and even storytelling in characters faces, give a good sense of the emotion of the book, and also skips over no detail. With a lot of artists of this style, there are some shortcuts taken with characters in a the background, but I didn’t feel that at all here. Also, David Baron continues to be strong on color art. His really saturated and dark palette work really well with the renderings. He does much the same atmospherically that I stated for Suayan, and has done so for his entire run on Bloodshot. That said, after Brian Reber did color for the last arc, Baron’s return isn’t jarring at all, thankfully giving the whole run a cohesive feel.

While I may talk about this book a lot, it continues to be one of the stronger superhero books on the stands. With this new arc, I don’t see it losing it’s place as one of the best anytime soon.

 

4.5 Red Circles out of 5