Dead Squad #3 Review

Dead Squad #3 has its share of niggling bumps, but it’s not strictly a bad wide. You can forgive a few faults if its still fun and, although it does dance on the line, it might still be doing okay.

The official description from IDW:

The Dead Squad has thirteen hours to live and only one hope: Vargas — a sultry ex-operative nursing both professional and personal grudges against Blake.

While I like what this issue – and the series tries to do – it does sometimes do it by the numbers. We’ve already established are trio of ‘heroes’ and, since they’re all men, of course we need a “sultry” accomplish. Surprise surprise, she has a romantic past with one of them. It’s stupidly obvious, adds cliches to the story but, outside of that, you do still get a decent amount of action and set pieces.

Matthew Federman and Stephen Scai write a decent script here, especially near the latter half. The first half is pretty damn generic, while the latter introduces some more unique concepts, especially around the themes of life and death. This is much more interesting, even if it is coming in blunt sections. If it was a little more elegant, I could get into this.

Visually, I found the artwork to be a little dull. Good, but dull. Again, this is split between the two halves. Brandon McKinney offers some fine pencils, but it starts off with muscle-armed men and typical feminine figures before jumping into overtly gothic/religious tones. The jump in themes reflects McKinney’s versatility, yet Douglas A. Sirois adds some rather flat, dark colors. The lack of contrast and vibrant sections makes everything feel a little dark and dull.

Like I said, it’s not a bad issue, but it has areas to improve. Still, it’s showing some signs and the title could be one to keep an eye on.