Die!Namite: Blood Red #4 // Review
Heads, helmets and hands are flyig everywhere in a splatter of blood. “I just murdered all of my co-workers,” she says. “It was gross and depressing.” Naturally she’s going to want some whiskey to cope with the situation. She might. want to hold-off on that for a little bit, though: there’s a whole lot more danger and weirdness on its weay in Die!Namite: Blood Red #4. Writer Fred Van Lente continues a big mega-crossover featuring nearly everyone in the Dynamite comics line. The story is brought to page and panel by the art team of Marco Finnegan, Manuele Ercolani and Jordi Perez. Color comes to the page courtesy of Ellie Wright.
Vampirella isn’t feeling too well. She’s just had to drink a whole lot of Matian blood from Dejah Thoris. Miss Fury is a bit upset about that. Thoris is a powerful warrior with a grat deal of knowledge that they’re going to likely need...and then there’s the fact that they can’t really afford to have a vampire ally occasionally. feeding on them when things get difficult. Vampirella assures Fury that THoris offered her blood to her. Of course...she’s knocked out and possibly dead and can’t exactly confirm what Vampirella claims.
Van Lente’s script works on a few different levels. The one hand, the pacing is remarkably good considering all of the different characters that are involved. That's not an easy task to do given how many different characters are involved. Furthermore, each character is given a unique personality that feels very dynamically, engaged with everybody else who is teaming up in this particular issue. On top of it all, the dialogue is very crisp and witty and snappy. As an action sequence, it's really a lot of fun. The overall premises ridiculously observed, of course. But it's a lot of fun.
The art team is doing a remarkable job of bringing everything to the page. Each character has their own distinct look. This goes a long way towards creating a rich visual texture for the action. On top of this, Wright has found almost the perfect amount of subtlety to the texture that adds death and ran to the page without completely upstaging all of the work that's being done by all the rest of the artists. Things may feel imprecise in places, but the overall rhythm of the action is maintained in a very brisk and entertaining issue.
Now that things are really going with his mega crossover, it's a lot of fun to see everything Russ across the page that the way it is. The sense of adventure is potent and this particular combination of characters. And it's difficult to say enough good things about just how well the author and our team are working with every single character in the crossover. It's very difficult to juggle this many characters in a way that feels satisfying. These guys make it look at easy with another deeply enjoyable mash-up issue.
