Witchblade # 21 // Review

Aphrodite IX has Sara’s neck between a couple of sword blades. All she would have to do is flinch and Sara would be dead. She’s looking really, really closely at Sara, though. And she’s remembering something. A flicker of recognition jolts across Aphrodite. And she kisses Sara. Things get considerably more complicated in Witchblade # 21. Writer Marguerite Bennett continues a deeply enjoyable run with Detective Pezzini in an issue brought to pae an panel by Giuseppe Cafaro. The re-introduction of Aphrodite IX continues to fuse new life into Bennett’s satisfying reboot of an old favorite as it ends the penultimate quarter of its second year.

And then Aphrodite painfully shorts-out and she goes limp. It’s a sudden and violent seizure. Sara decide to pick her up and run with her limp body. They’re on the run from a very high-tech automated security system that doesn’t seem to be all that concerned about their safety. Aphrodite reboots and asks Sara what her mission is. Instinctively, Sara tells her to follow along quietly. Thankfully, she accepts her mission. Now she and her partner have a new sexy killer android pet that was just attacking them. What’s the worst that could happen?

Bennett takes the “Born Sexy Yesterday” trope and pulls it out of the problematic male power fantasy roots. Aphrodite is being posed as a potential femme fatale love in.   terest for Sara, which swivels it over in a direction of asking the age-old sci-fi question of what is truly human. Given the nature of so much of the rest of what Bennett is exploring, the character of Aphrodite isn't anywhere near his problematic as she might have been under other circumstances. In the end, it's just really appealing and fun as an additional factor that continues to br   eathe new life into this reboot of an old favorite character.

Cafaro gives a real sense of immediacy about the chase scene that opens the issue. There's a real danger and chaos. That's palpable throughout the entire first scene which serves as a solid emotional grounding for much of the rest of what’s going on. The brief moment of romance that opens the issue is quickly followed by a very brisky paste, action sequence that rather definitely leads into breathtakingly well rendered emotional drama. There are  A LOT of people listed on the coloring team, which has done an exceptional job of delivering precisely the right atmosphere for a beautiful sci-fi action story.

There’s little question that this particular. The version of Aphrodite would be fun in her own series. Her introduction in Bennett’s Witchblade shows a great deal of promise that could easily work its way into something a lot more appealing than previous incarnations of her might have been. And with all of the contemporary exploration into AI and chatbots and virtual companions, it would be really interesting to explore Aphrodite again as informed on by the current state of technology.

Grade: B