Eternal Warrior: Days Of Steel #2 Review


Eternal Warrior, Days of Steel #2 is a brilliant second issue in the series. Gilad Anni-Padda has never looked so tough or so vulnerable.

Official Description from VALIANT:
Reborn in blood! The child who will save his people was born in the wilderness, under a blood moon… and now Gilad Anni-Padda, the Earth’s Eternal Warrior, must guard him and train him! An oppressed people begin to rally and fight the brutal army that rules them… but their only prize has been death. For thousands of years, the Eternal Warrior has stood under the grindstone of history, and held it back. But with so little hope for the child whose narrow shoulders must bear the weight of his people’s future, will this be the battle that finally forces surrender upon the Eternal Warrior?

Writer Peter Milligan‘s choice to have the Eternal Warrior defend and then choose between two babies, one of which will be his people’s savior, gives readers a new take on Gilad Anni-Padda. He has always been the defender of Earth but now his responsibility lies in choosing between a weak child or the tough one to train and to become as fierce a warrior as he is. The question is, has he chosen wisely?

ETERNAL WARRIOR DAYS OF STEEL #2 CoverMilligan shows us a side of Gilad which makes him vulnerable and unsure of himself. He still fights but his choice is beating him up mentally. It’s easy to write a tough, killer, warrior. It’s far more difficult to show the weaker more cerebral side of that same warrior but Milligan does a spectacular job doing just that and is a great storyteller from a hero’s psychological perspective.

Valiant has some of the most talented artists working today and Cary Nord is the cream of the crop. His ability to show such expressive character in faces and balancing it with the toughness of the warriors is an impeccable balancing act and Nord is a master of it. Simply the opening sequence of a meek man standing up to a soldier is as equally vibrant as a battle scene of Gilad vs an army. Very few artist can make a pub scene with a singing minstrel as important as a lively splash page.

Eternal Warrior, Days of Steel #2 should be enough to make many readers go back and try to find every story of Gilad’s previous mini-series and pretty much anything he’s every been in. Milligan makes Gilad Anna-Padda an even more interesting character than almost anything I have read and combined with Nord’s art makes me wish this was more than a three issue mini-series. Eternal Warrior, Days of Steel #2 is another winning Valiant title and one comic book fans should put on top of their reading stack immediately.

OUR RATING
9
  • + Interesting new take on lead character
  • + Lively expressive art
  • + Great pac and balance
  • - Only a 3 issue mini-series

S#!T Talking Central