Comic Review: Bloodshot Rising Spirit #3

Bloodshot Rising Spirit #3

Valiant Entertainment

Writer: Kevin Grevioux

Artist: Ken Lashley

Bloodshot Rising Spirit has been a disappointing follow-up to Lemire’s run so far. The writing hasn’t been too impressive, and it hasn’t added anything truly meaningful to the Bloodshot mythos. Its storytelling feels stale, and the content fits an older era of comics much more.

While Bloodshot Rising Spirit technically ads a lot to the history to the character and the nanite experiments, none of it is too interesting. Rising Spirit #3 reveals that Bloodshot’s origins go back to at least the 1800s. While this is all new information, I can’t say that is exciting. The action throughout the issue is mostly bland, with only a few standout moments. The actual story is also unexciting, with nothing feeling fresh or compelling. Towards the end, the pacing is rather messy, and it ends on what should be a cliffhanger but is instead just a giant question mark on the quality of the narrative.

As an action comic, Bloodshot Rising Spirit #3 is serviceable. While the flashbacks add unnecessary parts to the mythos, the modern sequences feature Bloodshot doing Bloodshot things. The composition of the page layouts allows the action to flow in a natural and satisfying way. Some of the actions drawn by artist Ken Lashley look a bit unnatural, but those who just want to see some violence should be satisfied here.

Outside of the decent action sequences, Bloodshot Rising Spirit suffers from wildly inconsistent art. The facial expressions are nearly unrealistic at times, which is jarring considering that the art goes for a realistic tone. Not only are the facial expressions inconsistent, but the face shapes themselves change often, even panel to panel at times. If it weren’t for key features such as hairstyle, I would think that one character was actually three people. Usually a few instances would be excusable, but this issue constantly appeared throughout this single issue.

I could go on and on about how frustrating of a follow-up this is to Lemire’s run. Even if you remove the previous run of Bloodshot from the equation, this just isn’t a good comic book. Bloodshot Rising Spirit feels like it belongs in a different decade.