#white fox

Taskmaster: The Rubicon TriggerbyJed Mackay
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

For all of MARVEL’s gargantuan, multi-universe cast of hero and criminal geniuses, the tendency to label this or that character as “underrated” is admittedly frequent and often attributed to the genuinely unremarkable. Indeed, there is a sea of B-level and C-level villainy that constitutes the bulk of the publisher’s history yet sees so few published pages. Many have contested it’s only a matter of assembling the right creative team to bring forgotten criminal talent to life (on this, Brubaker’s comments on Batroc the Leaper are prescient). All of which brings readers to TASKMASTER, an extraordinarily entertaining comic with clear and precise writing and a specific, polished visual aesthetic. Indeed, though relegated to B-level or C-level familiarity, Taskmaster deserves this treatment.

Taskmaster is brilliant, stubborn, and exceedingly content to give in to pragmatism. If he’s trapped in the ventilation system and a hero plans to use his laser eyes to fry him, Taskmaster will scream madly and run like hell. If he gets into a scrum with the general of the Dora Milaje, Taskmaster dutifully acknowledges the woman’s military expertise and takes as much as he gives. He’s not above tactical counter-planning and he’s not above manifesting an escape route on the most common of missions. In short, the guy does his homework. Every time.

Which is probably why he hates Nick Fury for pulling him into a black SUV for the sole purpose of snaring the biometrics of three amazingly well-trained or exceedingly well-guarded individuals. TASKMASTER is a cat-and-mouse comic. The book sends Taskmaster not unironically on a series of very specific tasks (kinesics; that is, to study three high-profile people) just as he flees a death sentence courtesy of the world’s deadliest assassin (who believes Taskmaster guilty of killing Maria Hill). The broader tale of a criminal needing to clear his name from a crime he didn’t commit is neither new nor fascinating. And the same can be said of the criminal-as-hero secondary theme. However, both narrative tapestries are torn asunder when the man of the hour is a psychotic fiend in a skull mask who thinks nothing of revealing a hero’s secret identity or of slicing someone’s throat in the middle of a street in broad daylight.

TASKMASTER is very sharply written. Taskmaster himself is chummy but frank. It’s not that he doesn’t take himself seriously; it’s the opposite; he takes himself too seriously. The result is a clever and purposeful combination of sinister humor and villainous glee. For example, when Taskmaster fights off White Fox, he earns his fair share of scrapes and cuts. But when it’s clear an easy exit isn’t in the cards, he straps in for some real fun (“Okay! We could’ve done it nice… So no we do it nasty.”).

The book’s art relishes the dirty close-ups warranted by the bloody fists of super-powered street fights, the disjointed limbs of a vibranium-infused melee, and the headaches induced by facing off with the famed Black Widow. Taskmaster’s skull mask is cool, but so are the harsh, angular shadows and wayward trickles of blood that make this comic book come alive. Vitti’s art is ideal for this type of comic. There no exaggerated movements. There is no glamorous posing. And every character who brawls legitimately looks the part.

An argument can be made for an anti-climactic ending or a tautological narrative that merely sends the characters back to where they were at the beginning, but TASKMASTER is only four issues long. And what this title accomplishes in only four issues is admirable. The characters are engaging, the art is engaging, and the story reinforces the protagonist at a granular level without going overboard. Reading this collection, one cannot help but agree: Yes, Taskmaster is underrated.

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Comics Reviews||ahb writes on Good Reads

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