Stripping down to the bone!
Creative Staff:
Story: Matt Kindt
Art: Diego Bernard
Colors: Ulises Arreola
Letters: Dave Sharpe
What They Say:
The last stand of Colin King! Roku has completed her mission. She has destroyed, discredited, and defeated the MI-6 operative known as Ninjak. But she didn’t account for one crucial component? the man behind the mask and gadgets, Colin King! With everything on the line, and nothing left to lose, Valiant’s death-defying super-spy strikes back at his sworn enemy to take back the life he once knew! But even if his body can survives the suicidal confrontation, can his mind withstand the untold torment Roku has prepared?
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
Ninjak brings this arc to a close, though with plenty of openings for more at the end, as it finishes out the events with Roku. Over the course of the first seventeen issues of this series I’ve had a bit of a mixed relationship with it, mostly because it feels like it’s flying through things that would make for an excellent arc that could last a few years. With the King’s Castle arc, it’s been one that while familiar has landed its hits solidly and made for a very good short run arc as it should. And it does it while tying nicely to the events of the past – which I think would have had more impact of the original arc had gone on quite a lot more – and touching upon the backup features that have been of very mixed quality for me, sometimes to the point where they were a struggle to get through. They payoff is certainly there, however.
The bulk of this issue is all about the fight and it’s one that works well because Diego Bernard really nails the dynamics of Roku as she goes through the motions here and repeatedly shows Colin that she’s in complete control. What drives it even more is that we get Roku further digging into her past that connections to Colin’s with her truly being Angela, and that she’s been waiting all this time to truly have her revenge on him. Of course, the problem is that he believed she was dead when they were attacked all those years ago in his different state of confidence in his abilities and he has, as he says, exacted a good bit of revenge himself over the years over what was done to her. Her death left an impact on him and seeing her like this, alive and fueled by the belief of what he did with his life being so wrong, well, it’s not going to go good for Colin.
Bernard really makes this a lot of fun to watch as it plays out, especially that big double page spread with the panel layouts and the flow of it all, as Roku has some serious power and intensity behind her. It may be play familiar as any end of arc segment will when it comes to the action, and I’m of mixed feelings about leaving Roku alive, but it opens up for some interesting possibilities down the line. Colin’s need to begin trusting people is slowly coming into play as we see at the end here, but what I really liked was seeing the final results for Alain and then the backup feature giving us a look at Colin’s parents lives after the retired and how that unfolded. It’s a kind of poetic justice in many ways, in some ways even worse for his father with how his mother treats him, but it puts some finality on that story that has me hoping we don’t really revisit them or that period again.
In Summary:
Ninak does some good stuff here at the end of the arc, one that went to some familiar places overall but tied it up nicely with some of the backup material from the past year. Part of me sort of wants to see everything presented in a more linear compiled form just to see if it flows in a more engaging way, though I suspect a simple re-reading of the material knowing what I know now will make it more interesting alone. Kindt has some good stuff going on here and Roku has lots of potential even if you can see her being spun into her own chaotic-good type anti-hero. Diego Bernard definitely made this arc a lot more fun to read with some great character designs and layouts that just gave it a dynamic sense combined with Arreola’s color design, especially with the red within Roku and her design. Good stuff all around that now has me wary as it moves into an arc involving the Eternal Warrior, a character I haven’t read combined with a future from Book of Death that I know little about.
Grade: B+
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: Valiant Entertainment
Release Date: July 13th, 2016
MSRP: $3.99
