By: Jai Nitz (writer), Colton Worley (artist), Romulo Fajardo (colorist)
The Story: Nazi and Japanese spies have shot Kato, thrown him from a moving train and kept on going towards San Francisco with what looks to be an experimental aircraft engine.
What’s Good: Once again, Nitz has knit together a dense, dynamic tapestry of culture, love, action, social commentary, international espionage and of course, ninjas. Remember my review of issue #3 when I went on about how the metaphor for the issue was trains and how knowledge and wisdom and not knowing were all caught in the neat metaphor about knowing trains? This issue’s metaphor circles around a tiger Kato once saw slap down on a bear. Everything in this issue (war, ninjas, stealth, will, complacency and patriotism) fits into this clever framing metaphor in Kato’s voice. It’s a narrative that sucked me in, and wouldn’t let me go until it spit me out at the end of the issue with the surprising character reveal. What I loved about the tiger metaphor was how the tiger was feared, reviled, respected in turn, before its basic flaws were revealed, much like Kato’s. The series of psychological reversals was a lot of fun to read and gave me a better window into Kato.
Worley’s art, especially the ninja fights, was good. Kato against thugs and spies is one thing, but against another ninja, with some weirdish weapons, was pretty cool. And Worley’s cover is worth framing.
What’s Not So Good: I think Nitz writes a pretty tight script, but even so, I found a couple of spots where terser dialogue might have increased the tension. Small point. The small other point is some of the art. Worley tells the story well, but as a fan of very detailed, textured art, I was left mildly unsatisfied with the abstraction of some faces and environments. There are gritty pieces and scratches and cuts from battles, but a level of detail, especially on the stylized faces, was missing for me.
Conclusion: Jai Nitz pulled this story up a notch, by once again expanding what this story is about. Kato is smart, noir comic story-telling well worth checking out and it is very quickly getting to the top of my pull list, beating out bigger Marvel and DC books. I’m in for issue #5.
Grade: A-
-DS Arsenault
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Conclusion