Blood Squad Seven #12 // Review
Ishrali Defense Forces are bombing the hell out of civilian targets. They claim to be routing terrorists, but there's no question that they're killing innocent people. The White House Press Secretary Angela Hart claims that the United States is vigorously pursuing any kind of diplomatic solutions to the situation. And they want it made perfectly clear that they're not engaging in any covered operations in the region. This would come as new to a certain group of super-powered heroes who are very much in the line of fire in Blood Squad Seven #12. Writer Joe Casey continues a superhero drama with artist Paul Fry and colorist Francesco Segala.
The squad is trying to protect innocent bystanders in Ozai City. A pair of Ishrali F-15’s shoot by. American-made, but customized by the government that purchased them. There’s a deployment of explosives. The squad has a hell of a time protecting people from the blast. The pilots don’t know that there are Americans on the ground. The top brass of the military might know about it. If they do, they don’t exactly care. By all outward appearances, they don't releasing the care who is on the ground. They just want to bomb the city to the ground. The squad finds itself in very hostile territory.
And then Casey gets lost in a whole bunch of stuff that isn't really terribly interesting. The larger run of the series is a big muddled, massive superhero tropes that have been popping up in team books over the course of many, many years. It's a big, jumbled mess. It's like they threw a whole bunch of X-Men books in a blender and pasted it together into a script. Those scenes sat in Ozai City, though? THOSE can be some pretty powerful moments that are well worth the. tedium of the rest of the issue. It's too bad he couldn't just focus on that portion of his narrative. It would've been much more satisfying as an issue.
To his credit, Paul Fry does a good job of delivering visuals that look very distinct to the 1990s superman mutant team books that were so popular. Fry find a way to make the Jim Lee/Rob Liefeld/Whilce Portacio-inspired design feel fresh and original. The drama feels real. And it feels real in a way that those 1990s artist is never really quite managed. Granted, the style and the execution aren't quite as good as the old legends of the 1990s. But that doesn't really matter. Because Fry really has the drama down in a wave that feels remarkably fresh and vivid and it almost makes the casual reader want to care about this stuff that's not happening in Ozai City.
As always: it's very difficult to judge a single chapter of a series like this. The plot has so much that's woven together from various angles and various elements that it's really difficult to judge a single issue. But a single issue you really is where this is sort of thing lives. The serialized nature of it all. And the need for each chapter to be very distinct and very compelling and give the reader a reason to pick up the next issue. So much of what's going on in this particular issue feels like it's losing the thread on keeping the casual reader interested.
