Taskmaster #2 Review: An Amazing Performance

For reasons that are interesting but ultimately irrelevant right now, in Taskmaster #2, the masked mercenary with photographic reflexes has a mission to clear his name. Someone assassinated spymaster Maria Hill and made it look like Taskmaster pulled the trigger. To find out why he fell into focus, he has to mimic the body language signatures of three of the world's most secretive spies, starting with Phil Coulson.

If you're a fan of Agents of SHIELD, the guy here is a lot more Sarge than Coulson, with a mean streak as wide as Volstagg. Nobody has asked how Comics Coulson went from earnest to "Henry Peter Gyrich knockoff," but here we are. ComiCoulson responds to a fair number of things in what could be considered an over-reactionary fashion. That's where the book's cover comes in, and so does the property damage.

Jed McKay's script here owes a lot to Matt Fraction's Hawkeye for opening the door to a protagonist getting so heavily beaten up on the way to concluding a storyline. There's a perfect bookend to keep the plot moving, and, unlike the last issue, Taskmaster is the star, even though it's tough to get such an amazing performance.

There we have to stop because there have been a lot of books with Hyperion in them, but few make the visual spectacle of his threat so apparent like this. That's largely due to the work of Alessandro Vitti, Guru-eFX, and Joe Sabino, who make Hyperion terrifying in ways we may not have seen since Irredeemable. That's a big part of this book's appeal and why it became a winner this week. RATING: BUY.