Michael Gaydos is the wrong guy for The Black Hood, just because he’s so perfectly the “right guy” for it. The series is Archie Comics’s attempt to do something knew with their superhero properties (they’ve been trying to do something with them for a couple decades now). Duane Swierczynski writes a tough story, Gaydos does tough art. It’s all realistic, set it modern Philadelphia, very depressing.
So why’s Gaydos wrong? Because he doesn’t bring anything to the comic. Swierczynski doesn’t have an appealing protagonist or a compelling setup–a cop gets injured (and disfigured); he eventually gets hooked on painkillers and then assumes the identity of the Black Hood, a vigilante he himself killed in the incident where he got disfigured.
It’s all so clean it’s pointless. Swierczynski is going through the motions; make this comic tough. Gaydos is doing the same thing.
Whether it’s tough isn’t important at all.
CREDITS
The Bullet’s Kiss, Part One; writer, Duane Swierczynski; artist, Michael Gaydos; colorist, Kelly Fitzpatrick; letterer, Rachel Deering; editors, Vincent Lovallo, Paul Kaminsky and Alex Segura; publisher, Archie Comics.
Swierczynski takes a peculiar approach to dealing with Bloodshot’s side of the final Harbinger Wars issue. He makes it as lame as humanly possible.
Dysart brings Harbinger Wars into the station and it’s entirely unclear why they bothered with the trip at all. Besides–apparently–cutting down on cast members, the crossover event did very little. Dysart doesn’t even seem to pretend it did anything. He leaves a lot unresolved so readers have to keep going with the main series (the point of a crossover book after all); it means there’s nothing to do the story itself. Dysart can’t fake it and make Wars seem worth it.
I’ve only read a few issues of Bloodshot but it seems like a big part of what Swierczynski does is have contrived scenes with Bloodshot and the men who wrong him in the past. It’ll seem like Bloodshot is finished, his nanites unable to repair him, but then he’ll magically come through thanks to the perseverance of the human spirit.
Why am I reading this comic book? I mean, Dysart does script a good issue. It’s a little light, he’s split between way too many things and the issue isn’t oversized, but why am I reading it? It’s not escapism. It’s painfully realistic superhero comics. Introduce this likable character to kill them–seeing terribly abused kids murdered by paramilitary, blood hungry goons–fun times.
I like the way Valiant–or Swierczynski in this case–is handling the Harbinger Wars crossover. He’s using this issue of Bloodshot to flush out the relevant scenes in the main book; it’s expensive if a reader buys all the issues, but it also means it doesn’t have to be expensive. Each piece of the puzzle isn’t integral to getting a story.
I love how Dysart makes sly jabs at the Valiant Universe (or whatever they call it), pointing out how bad ideas are from the nineties. It’s a weird thing, which doesn’t break the story–possibly because he’s already got the debriefing framing and it allows for a lot of colorful commentary.
Stefano Gaudiano is a great inker, though not really one I think of for action comics. Barry Kitson is a great action penciller, but not one I think of for a lot follow through. Together… together they make a very nice pair, especially since this comic takes place entirely at night so everything’s very dark.
I’m not sure what I should be getting out of Harbinger Wars. Dysart thinks things out–he structures the issue around some government types interrogating some bad corporation types. Some psiot kids got free or something, kind of has to do with Harbinger–oh, right, the good guys from Harbinger need to protect the kids from the bad guy. Bloodshot is in it too, working for the bad guy right now but I’ll bet he switches sides eventually.