Just a little bit of a time skip.
Creative Staff:
Story: Matt Kindt
Art: Khari Evans, Andres Guinaldo
Colors: Ulises Arreola, Chris Sotomayar
Letters: Dave Sharpe
What They Say:
Many years from now, Earth’s immortal master of war and the world’s deadliest intelligence operative fight side by side. As was foretold in the BOOK OF DEATH, an aging Ninjak and Eternal Warrior are fated to spend their days as humanity’s guardians, protecting it from the myriad threats that loom over the horizon of Earth’s future. But when the ultimate menace rises to obliterate all traces of life, can Colin King and Gilad Anni-Padda – Ninjak and the Eternal Warrior – cement their status as the Valiant Universe’s greatest heroic duo?or will their legacy go up in flames? Plus: Back in the present, the unthinkable has happened to Ninjak and his fellow MI-6 agents that survived the horrors of the Deadside! Infected with an aggressive and lethal cancer from his exposure to a noxious parallel dimension, Ninjak must race against the clock for a cure before he makes a permanent trip to the realm of the dead!
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
Ninjak’s closing out, at least for the moment, the previous arc and his fight with Roku worked well as it hit the high notes it needed while delivering plenty of action and some solid psychological elements. With this installment, Ninjak is getting billed as having a jumping on point and I can see that, though it’s one heck of an awkward jumping on point. One of the big pluses of this series for me has been it largely being disconnected from the other books so that I could just enjoy the tale. Here, we’re tied back to the Eternal Warrior character and the lengthy history that the two have, which is easy enough to figure out in the basics. I’ve read Eternal Warrior in its previous 90’s incarnation but haven’t been exposed to this one, though you can figure him out from what we get here without any problem.
The twist here is that after deconstructing everything in Colin’s life as Roku did, what we get here is something that doesn’t just leap forward a bit but rather probably by a good thirty years or so. This much older Colin has been brought on to help out on a job with Giland, aka the Eternal Warrior, as he’s searching for an escaped prisoner named Fakir that Colin dealt with years ago. The opening installment here gives us some good time in showing the kind of relationship Colin and Gilad have, and how Colin operates as an older man, all of which is definitely interesting as it leaves you really wanting to fill in the blanks of his past. Fakir’s story is one that’s just teased a touch in showing us how he’s where the undead monk was all those years ago looking for something called Calamity Molecules for a higher power, which means we’ve got some weirdness coming up as this arc gets underway.
Khari Evans boards the series for this arc and delivers a really good installment as aging up characters and working with old and worn down men like these can be a challenge for an artist as there really has to be lines in their faces and hands to feel right. She has some great layouts for the fight sequences and dealing with the clones as well as delivering something disturbing in the backgrounds and setting for the Himalayas. And her artwork stands in contrast to Andres Guinaldo for the backup feature where we get present day Colin, smooth and all, dealing with the fallout from the fight with Roku. This piece is good as we get Kindt showing how things have gone bad for Neville as well and that Colin is going back to freelance in a bigger way as he believes Neville was part of the problem of how Roku took him down. The chapter sets up what’s to come but a lot of it is just bringing out some very bad blood that exists between the two that has been papered over by operations and missions for a few years.
In Summary:
Ninjak’s been an uneven book for me since the get go, particularly since so much of what we get feels rushed and without the engagement and involvement we need to really connect with it all. There are great themes and ideas that could go on for a dozen issues that are compressed into one or two at best. With this issue, Kindt takes us to a point in Colin’s life decades in the future and that’s really engaging, though it’s going to be filled with teases and potential misdirections along the way. I like the potential here and I really like what Khari Evans brings to the book in giving us this older Colin. At the same time, the usually problematic or uninteresting backup feature material becomes intriguing as it puts us in the present and begins to show what Colin’s doing after his encounter with Roku and I want a lot more of that, giving me hope for an interesting feature for the next few issues. I’m definitely intrigued overall but am wary as I’ve been for most of this run.
Grade: B+
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: Valiant Entertainment
Release Date: August 10th, 2016
MSRP: $3.99