The Good
Rai continues his search to find out who commited the first murder in 1,000 years. The second issue comes off much like a detective book, which is a very interesting way to go about telling this story, but overall, it serves its purpose and it makes it feel very different from the rest of the books in the Valiant Universe.
There's one moment where Rai speaks about the legend of the Eternal Warrior. This will hopefully lead to a great cross-over between these two characters, but we're just looking at a single sentence of the book.
The issue really picks up when Silk comes into play. Silk is a very interesting, and very old, character. His conversation with Rai is the best part of the issue, and artist Clayton Crain does some amazing work during a beautiful two page spread. The page set-up is brilliant and flows incredibly well, and the color work is fantastic. Silk has this amazing, haunting look on his face that is unforgettable.
The Bad
It hurts to say this but this issue was pretty dull. Issue #1 of RAI kicked off in a momentousness way, but the second issue just fizzles and fizzles quickly. A little more than halfway through this issue, things begin to get interesting, but by that point, the reader has lost interest in the issue as a whole.
Issue one sets everything up very nicely, but the transition into two is a tad rough. From the opening pages, it feels like the reader has missed out on something. [cont]
One big problem in this overall issue was there were a few pages that were hard to read. Crain's set up of the pages and where the word bubbles were placed made it hard to see where you're supposed to read next. This caused confusion in many spots of the issue. There's also some moments here that feel rushed. The art feels a bit uncompleted, like some colors were quickly thrown on and it's not the usual quality fans expect from Crain.
The Verdict
All-in-all, this issue was a bit of a disappointment, coming off that amazing first issue. However, it's not all bad. RAI presents itself as a solid detective book here, but the problem was that the issue wasn't that exciting and came off a bit dull. Crain's art looks amazing in some places and lacks polish in others. It feels rushed. RAI shows a lot of promise but it needs to pick up a bit more to stand toe-to-toe with the rest of Valiants books. Overall, I'd give this issue a mild recommendation.