I am a recent convert to Bloodshot, having discovered him last year and promptly binge-reading as much of his back catalogue as I could find. For those of you who may be new to the title, he is one of Valiant's headline characters in their universe, a rogue supersoldier with nanites in his blood to keep him alive, heal his injuries, and generally make him a force to be reckoned with when it is needed.
We recently learned that the Bloodshot we have been following all this time was not, in fact, the first Bloodshot to be created, and this book follows the adventures of 2 of his predecessors, Tank Man and Viet Man, on a compulsory vacation day. This doesn't sound like a great sell so far: no sign of the 'main' Bloodshot, and a premise that isn't going to set up much in the way of action. But bear with me, because this actually turned out to be a great read.
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We see the 2 men go off to retrace their steps pre-Bloodshot programme, and we actualy get a very heartfelt piece of storytelling, about loss, change, and having things taken from you. If you're looking for gunfights this is not for you, but I like character-driven stories and I like it when I have reason to care about those characters. And this issue delivers that in spades. It's nice to see a comic make an effort not to glorify war and not pretend that it leaves no marks on the survivors; soldiers have been through things that only other soldiers will ever truly understand, and that is a strong theme in this story, one which I enjoyed and even made me well up a bit in places.
The story has a good pace to it, which is helped by the artwork which keeps you moving through the book and makes you forget this is actually quite a dialogue-heavy comic. Retrospectively giving background to ensemble characters can be very tricky and can feel forced, but this fits into what we already know of Tank Man and Viet Man very well, and feels like a history that fits into what we already know, rather than feeling tacked-on as sometimes happens when a publisher decides to flesh out a minor character.
Also included is a short teaser strip for Bloodshot: Salvation, which is beautifully drawn but doesn't tell us much at all about what to expect. There is a panel of text with a summary of what is to come, and they really could have just used that without the teaser strip and achieved the same goal. But I'm always looking forward to more Bloodshot, so as a fan, I'll happily take the extra pages!
4 / 5
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