NINJAK: SUPERKILLERS 2 (of 2)
Story: Jeff Parker
Art: Mike Norton
48 pages, $9.99
Valiant / Alien Books
Review: Kris Lorenzen
What It Is: The conclusion to Alien Books first foray into taking over the Valiant line of characters. Sure, maybe the X-O MANOWAR: UNCONQUERED #4 was the first released in this new venture, but that was already in the can before Valiant decided to license out the publishing of their books. Oh, Valiant. How many times in how many decades can you attempt to break my heart?

The Good: It seems, based on this and a couple months of upcoming solicitations, that Alien Books is going to focus on one-shots and two-issue prestige (like this one) format books, somewhere in the 48- or 56-page range. If you preorder comics like I do, this series cost you around twelve bucks for 96 pages of story, which is comparable to other company’s output and the quality and production values of this series were top-notch. One and two issue stories are a relatively small investment, but comics readership is built on habit and with this strategy you need to sell people on your books every single time. The books need to be bulletproof or none buys the next book.

Ninjak is like Batman in that he’s smarter, better trained, and more prepared than anyone else, which can be dull, but Parker uses a clever story devise to hinder our hero and introduce the possibility of him actually losing. This book wraps up this story, and the larger story Parker started way back in Ninjak’s too short-lived 2021 series.

The Bad: The color. This is slightly better than book one, but still most of these scenes look almost monochrome. It’s an action story about an unbeatable superhero spy ninja with sci-fi gadgets fighting humanoid animal hybrid mercenaries—this doesn’t need realistic hues and modeling. Go pop-art, go nuts. Use all the colors.

Mike Norton is a solid, readable comic book artist. However, this is a direct squeal to NINJAK (2021) and the “Daylight” four issue story which had art by Javier Pulido who was a stylistic revelation. Following that book with a story that uses all the same characters…well, it’s not bad by any stretch, but the comparisons are inevitable.

The Score: 6 out of 10 capes

Further Reading: The aforementioned NINJAK (2021) miniseries will give you the beginning of this tale, and Valiant’s UNITY (2014) has Ninjak as part of the best super-team book in recent memory.