Valiant Entertainment 2013
Written by Matt Kindt
Illustrated by Jose Luis, Alisson Rodrigues & Jefte Paolo
Coloured by Andrew Dalhouse
Unity is a global law enforcement team of super-powered operatives, dedicated to protecting humanity from top-secret threats. There’s never been a team quite like this one…but they’re not without precedent.
Throughout history, people with exceptional abilities have always sought each other out and banded together to face the world’s greatest threats. One of these menaces is the War Monger—a seemingly immortal agent of chaos who delights in picking fights and bragging about her exploits throughout history. She claims to have fought super-teams from the Middle Ages to the Victorian era to WWI, where she met Unit-Y—the team of heroes deployed under the leadership of the Eternal Warrior.
But the War-Monger has returned today, violently assaulting the Iranian ambassador to the U.K. in hopes of triggering another war…and before Unity could gather to defeat her en masse, she’s been taking out key members—Ninjak, Livewire, and GIN-GR—in brutal one-on-one attacks in their own homes…
The War Monger arc continues here and with each member of Unity she faces we learn more and more about her history and the history of super-teams throughout the Earth’s history. Even at one point having faced a much younger Eternal Warrior. The last member of the team she’s visiting to remove from the playing field. Of course that she’s the incarnation of war itself isn’t such a far fetched idea, I mean as long as men, Homo(whatever) have been around there has been jealousy and coveting to possess what others do and that she is the embodiment of that and wishes to keep the world in constant battle because it pleases her to do is just a whole lot of fun.
That Matt continually has her tell her life’s story to each individual makes a lot of sense to me. She doesn’t have many people whom she can talk to that would understand anything close to who and what she is but this Unity team, the current incarnation of the continuing world’s attempt at keeping balance, is the closest thing she can get to who would understand. Gilad of all actually is slightly younger than she is but is easily the most relatable to what she’s been through. Plus just hearing her history this way and getting to know her and everything she’s done and how being the embodiment of War has caused her to behave as she does.
Also the whole Cold War era where she has to really orchestrate both sides into taking action instead of remaining guarded and quiet does go a long way to showing when she wants to she really can think, plan and be more than just a brutal physical threat. Plus we are introduced to yet another team of heroes who I now wish to see more of. The Shademen well they don’t seem very powerful per se but they are intriguing even if she manages to dispatch them rather easily until realizing of course how they found her to begin with and that sexually ambiguous character with the poison lipstick yeah that is stellar stuff.
Hell even getting to the Vietnam War and seeing the assembled team going up against her then was fabulous and that 70’s afro version of Bloodshot yeah we need to see him some more too cause that brother is funky.
What else we learn during this story actually came as a surprise to me and honesty I have to applaud Matt for that because I didn’t see that coming. Now more than ever i’m looking forward to next issue to see just how this all plays out.
I’m a huge fan of the flashback artwork. Really nice, crisp, clean and full of attention to detail. The preset however left me flat as if if everything was so boxy without any real body shape being as nice and familiar or realistic as the others. Definitely set that apart but also keeps the book from being truly great for me. Even when it’s tried to be given depth it still seems incredibly two dimensional and can’t think of another word but flat. Which is a real shame considering how stellar all the flashbacks were in their sense of giving you a real person with dimension and easily read emotions.