Okay, Parker’s getting the series on course here. It’s not perfect—Thunderbolts is still kind of a stupid idea (doesn’t DC have their own Thunderbolts series now too—or is it Suicide Squad again, which Thunderbolts ripped off)—but it’s a lot better.
Walker continues to annoy, at least until they get to the big action sequence in the second half and then he’s an asset. Just two pages before, during the briefing, he’s weak on talking heads. And when he has John Walker (U.S. Agent) show up as Luke’s supervisor… wow, does Walker draw buff blond guys bad (he drew Steve Rogers identically in the first issue).
The previous issue’s cliffhanger turns out to be a stupid ruse; if they’d just done a double-sized issue, combining this one and the previous, it’d have started the arc out on good footing. Instead, this issue feels Parker’s playing catch-up.
I guess I’ll just consider this Parker’s shitty Boom title he’d write for the extra dosh…I made a couple of attempts to get into this title, but no luck. There just wasn’t enough content to pique my interest. For an ensemble book that Parker seems to excell at, I felt little to no empathy for the characters, or really any sense of relationship between them. And don’t get me started again on Luke…