Taskmaster #1 // Review
Created by David Michelinie and George Perez as a villain for the Avengers at the beginning of the 1980s, The Taskmaster always seemed like a far more interesting person than he was allowed to be as a supporting character. A man with photographic reflexes who can do whatever he observes others doing as well as they do it seems like a natural fit for an action series. Marvel takes a closer look at the character in a new series written with wit by Jed MacKay. Artist Alessandro Vitti shoots the action across the page in a fast-paced introduction.
Being a supervillain is really, really expensive. If you're not, say...the head of state of a foreign nation like Latveria or in charge of a huge corporate empire, paying the bills isn't always easy. So the Taskmaster finds himself golfing—the 4th Annual Maggia Celebrity Doubles Charity Gold Tournament in New Jersey. Someone's paying him a lot of money to win. Taskmaster can only tolerate it so long. As luck would have it, he's pursued on the golf course by an assassin. The bad news: that assassin is Black Widow. So he's doomed. So why is Nick Fury helping him out?
MacKay's characteristic humor serves this series well. It's an excellent companion to his successful work on Black Cat earlier this year. MacKay clearly has fun with anti-heroes. The good news is that he's excellent at transferring that fun to the page. With most of the actual action taking place at a golf course, one might expect the first issue to be a little silly. It is. MacKay manages to twist that silliness into an impressively enjoyable action sequence that launches the main character into a meeting with America's most seasoned spy.
The big challenge for any artist with a character like Taskmaster is his mask. It's a skull. It's hard to get an audience to relate to a skull without making it look very, very goofy. Vitti does an excellent job of drawing the reader into the supervillain's plight with sympathetic emotions breathing through the mask. And the action in the issue is beautifully rendered. Nearly half the chapter is a chase sequence. Vitti keeps the momentum going with style and nuance for the entire length of the scene. The meeting with Fury at issue's end matches Taskmaster's skull with the cool, relaxed intensity of Fury in a sharply dramatic lead-in to the second issue.
Given how well the opening issue feels, it's kind of surprising that Marvel hadn't thought to feature him in his own series earlier. MacKay infuses the character with a sharp swagger that hits the page with a whole lot of appeal. Perez created a hell of a look for the character back in 1980, but it's kind of clutter for any artist to try to work with. Vitti does such an excellent job of making that clutter work in favor of a visually distinct character in a refreshingly fun series.
