Hunter Killer #5: Suprisingly imbreast -er, impressed

Yay! Another review! And hey, for the first time, it's not for a comic published by Marvel or DC. This shows that my taste in comics is ECLECTIC. Though I suppose Image comics is like the third biggest comics publisher, at least in North America. So whatever.

Anywho...

HUNTER KILLER #5

Now, at first glance, Hunter Killer (as well as most of the Top Cow line) seems like the worst piece of shit to somehow survive the nineties. Lots of violence, generic-looking beefy guys, scantily clad females with large boobies, and really big guns. I mean, just look at the name itself: HUNTER KILLER. What the hell? Is that meant to inspire awesomeness just because it has the word Kill AND Hunt in it? It reminds me again of the nineties, where we had characters named Deathstroke, Killstrike, Deadpool, Deathtrap, Deadshot, Deathlocke, Killblood, Killhunt, Deathhunt, Blood-Death, Overdeath, Killdeath, Deathblood, Bloodhuntkilldeath, etc. etc. (while I made many of these names up, odds are that they did in fact exist as characters at some point in the nineties).

So yeah, I probably would have stayed far away from this series had it not been for three factors:

1) The release of the 25-cent issue zero- a price not even the stingiest Jew could resist (I'm jewish so I can say that but you can't).

2) The fact that Kingdom Come scribe Mark Waid is writing this, indicating that it couldn't be ALL bad.

3) The comic came out during the summer, when I was working at a comic book store and getting paid in comics like a fucking idiot.

Anyways, I know I shouldn’t have picked up this comic, but I’m borderline glad I did.

Hunter-Killer isn’t shit. It’s pretty clever, actually. I dunno. Maybe it’s because of how moronic the comic seems at first glance that it comes off as so intelligent when you actually start reading it.

Okay, maybe “intelligent” is a bit of a stretch. After all, any comic with the line “I’m gonna snap like a training bra on Lindsay Lohan” can hardly be considered intellectual. Still, just about every issue so far has had either a huge twist or at the very least a small, clever one.

This may prove to be a liability, however, as I can easily imagine that the Hunter Killer team will have a difficult time keeping up with their twist-and-turn quota for more than maybe ten issues. For example, we’ve seen a whole bunch of interesting characters in the first five issues. These people usually act as secondary characters, and so far have been killed off on a very quick basis (their average lifespan being oh, maybe one and a half issues). The speed at which Waid burns through these characters could result in there being no characters left. Well, besides the main three. Unfortunately, they’re the dullest/most clichéd of the lot, with the possible exception of Ellis, who’s pretty much a mystery right now.

But the other two? Man oh man, do they not interest me (I had originally typed that "man on man." Freudian slip? You decide). We’ve got Samantha, the big-boobied broad who I’m not sure but has probably said “Don’t call me toots” at some point in the last five issues. For the record, she’s the one with the large boobs on the cover.

Ugh, and then there’s the Wolverine knockoff. Well, I guess he’s more badass than Wolverine, because his name’s Wolf, and wolves are more badass than wolverines, right? Holy shit! He’s badass! For the record, he’s the one on the cover who looks like Wolverine, only more badass.

It’s a shame the main characters are so unoriginal, because if you look beyond that you will see a neat little story. Still, I think that this is because of the writer’s personal strengths, and that once he leaves the book, Hunter Killer will be all of the suck, and none of the rock. Let’s hope that doesn’t happen.

The art is sharp, by the way. Pretty much exactly what you’d expect from Marc Silvestri. Did I mention that he draws big boobies?

7 out of 10