Liefeld Hasn't Killed It!
Sigh. I know a cover is just a cover, but still... Liefeld's body shapes are particularly crappy here, don't feel like going into details, and he's made the whole thing look far more 'The Expendables' than the enjoyable 'Bourne/Bond' more stylized feel it's had. Hopefully this cover doesn't reflect a massive change in story tone...
Grifter's personality has noticably shifted, ever so slightly, but not exactly in a bad way. I can't say it's 'better' or 'worse' than before; it's good enough and similar enough for me to feel mostly neutral about it, though the fact that the change was noticeable is a bit of a flaw. But it leads into this 'Second Season,' as I like to call it, having a more unrestrained tone of fun. Previously it was starting to lose a bit of that to repetition, but the fun has been brought back to a fantastic degree. Page two is Grifter, upside-down in the air on a snowboard, having just gone off a cliff shooting a group of Daemonites behind him. It's.... it's awesome really. And then the way he describes killing them as fun... it works really well to draw you into this story that feels like pure entertainment.
And working into this rejuvenated sense of pure adrenaline fun is a (mostly) improvement of Scott Clark's art on this series. The opening fight scene has the same edge to it as most, but has a much smoother and tight flow to it. Clark's seriously upped his dynamic action game here and I'm loving it. The problem though is when Cheshire shows up. It IS Cheshire right? The solicits said it was her. It's probably asking for trouble by complaining that she's not like her Pre New 52 counterpart; but I mean... if she wasn't broken she didn't need fixing. Even the Young Justice Cheshire was the same spark as the old comic version. This one is like.... a poor man's Talia Al Ghul. Oh, we were talking about art, right. It's as if Clark started taking a few lessons from Liefeld when he went to draw Cheshire. Her body is CREEPY thin, her boobs look weird, and just.... her body's got such an odd shape, like she's been stretched out on a rack. And then once out of her 'winter spandex,' she removes the outer layer (which barely could've given more protection against the cold) to reveal a cheesy outdated skimpy costume that actually looks WORSE than when Liefeld drew it on the cover. And we were doing so well with the lack of sexualization in the New 52...
And then there's this angle about a 'Chosen one.' It's.... REALLY cheesy, and not in the good way. It doesn't really suit the fun 'Bond/Bourne' feel I've been talking about. This series, even with this issue, has been a balance between fun adrenaline secret agent and fun adrenaline science fiction. This whole 'chosen one' brings in a more cliche disney/fantasy tone that clashes with everything else present. Grifter himself lampshades the ridiculousness of the notion, but that doesn't minimize the effect. I'm hoping its a setup for a nice twist where Grifter isn't the chosen one, but still ends up leading the rebellion to victory anyways.
In Conclusion: 3.5/5
I was pretty hesitant about this when I heard Liefeld was coming onto this book, and his cover certainly didn't help matters, but in the end it was quite enjoyable. I had to shake my head in shame over Cheshire, and the story dragged a bit towards the end when they just spent pages with 'chosen one' exposition; but the overall feel of the series is perfectly intact.
