When last we observed Luther Strode we were treated to a walk though comic book icon park. Our hero is bullied so he sends away for the Charles Atlas strength magazine and it oddly works. His high school has a Flash Thompson like bully who is bested by our hero. There is a girl with red hair who likes our hero. This is all pretty much to form.
There is one thing that’s different about this hero’s Mary Jane: She’s sexually aggressive. I think I met that girl in high school and she frightened me. Here’s a scene:
Yet another issue that stands out from the kindly mythos of the teen hero or I don’t remember this happening to Flash Thompson or the “Sweep the Leg guy“:
By the way, if you’re keeping track of the carnage: the dad, on the left, seems to have had his body torn in two. What’s left of the mom’s body is on the right. The mother’s head seems to have been ripped off. Let’s presume the bald guy is the villain. Definitely more menacing than The Vulture.
This bald guy was seen in the last issue. Here he’s seen decimating the high school bully. He does this by killing his entire family. We can assume that the bully dies but the one rule we’ve learned from popular art: nobody’s dead until you see a dead body, or in this comic unless you see someone who’s had his arms ripped off, head pounded into jelly and torso torn from his or her body. I suppose this is the aspect of the comic that earns its mature rating. The fact is that its Millarworld level of violence just far surpasses anything that I’ve seen in the earlier Ditko/Lee Spiderman comics. Even though its visually stunning I’m not sure this makes the comic better or “mature”. Just bloodthirsty. I don’t suppose its asking too much for comic book creators to emulate the late Steve Gerber? Nobody’s left who’s that good? Figures.
I’m trying to figure out the purpose of the bald guy. I can’t tell if he’s just a murderous psychopath or the original writer of the “Hercules Method” or a student gone bad or all of the above. But he seems to be killing everyone involved with the very uniquely talented Luther Strode. We also know that he collects other uniquely talented people from issue one. But why? I’ll guess we’ll find out next issue.
This month’s comic ends with yet another stroll through comic book cliche park. This features our hero completely dispatching two common criminals. Strode doesn’t kill these guys, at least not yet even though it’s hinted at that he clearly could. I had no idea that throwing slim jims into the barrels of semi automatic pistols was an effective tool.
Fantastic art. Technically executed story but not really original or memorable, yet. 3.5 stars out of five. Still curious about the next one.
