Questo libro continua ad essere uno dei miei favoriti. According to Lorenzo, one of my readers from Italy, that's Italian for "this continues to be one of my favorite books." Hey, what do you want, it's ten issues in and I've been saying the same damn thing about the Losers every month. And I will continue to say it until a lot more of you are buying it, because the Losers is month-in and month-out the best damn action comic on the stands. Really fun characters with solid dialogue and amusing asides, some complex (but not overly complex) plots involving espionage and conspiracies and a shadowy, effective art style courtesy of Jock give us a monthly dose of intelligent stories combined with the lowbrow thrill of stuff getting blowed up real good.
Half of the fun of the Losers is the personalities of the lead characters themselves, and the way they interact. Aisha's sour personality and impulsive shoot first attitude makes for a couple of pretty good moments this issue, especially the one that contrasts her with the more laid-back (but equally deadly) personality of Cougar. Jensen, the mouthy wiseass of the group, fades back a little this issue, so that we can instead get a little more development of Pooch, who had seemed like the wise, reliable one but whose family man ethics cause a bit of a stir with the realities the team has been stuck with. It's all good character interaction, and that alone is enough to keep me interested in a book.
That's not all that the Losers has to offer up, though. Diggle has introduced a new foil for the team in the form of an older CIA agent brought in from the cold to look into "Max," the mysterious CIA spook who set up the Losers in the first place and who serves as a convenient embodiment of everything bad the CIA represents. The briefing on Max and the Goliath heist was interesting enough, if only to reveal some of what the CIA knows, but even more interesting was seeing Agent Stegler encounter the General from the downtime issues and prove himself just as smart and capable as we've seen the Losers to be. Whether he'll be a true foe or just wind up allying himself with the team later, I don't know, but either way, Stegler is a welcome addition to Diggle's cast of characters.
This issue is actually a little light on the action, but you won't hear me complaining about it. Jock is great with the action sequences, such as the one that closes out this issue, but he's just as good in depicting the unusual terrain that the team finds itself in, or in telling stories through their facial expressions. The Cougar/Aisha/Clay moment was terrific, and I love the sense of isolation and shadow that comes from the setting of the talk between Stegler and his boss. Jock conveys the shadowy tone, the touch of humor, the military hardware, the unusual locales, everything that makes the book what it is.
The Losers remains at the top of my must read pile every month. Definitely off the beaten path for Vertigo, but oddly fitting with the general nature of the imprint, it never fails to satisfy my jones for action nor my interest in intelligent and well-executed comics.
