Taskmaster #3 // Review
One of the Marvel Universe's greatest assassins is on the run from...one of the Marvel Universe's greatest assassins. His name is Tony. Black Widow has him in her crosshairs. Tony's got the support of super-spy Nick Fury, so he's not totally in the dark. Fury has sent him to Korea to gather intel that could help him out. He's got advanced tech, but there's a hell of a lot of danger lurking around the corners in Taskmaster #3. Writer Jed MacKay continues a deeply entertaining engagement with a Marvel villain that is briskly brought to the page by artist Alessandro Vitti.
Taskmaster has come to Seoul. He's planned for a perilous mission into one of Korea's most secure facilities. It's the headquarters of Tiger Division: the Republic of Korea's government superhuman team. High-tech Pym particle technology allows Taskmaster to hitch a ride in on Korea's Captain America/Superman, but once he's in, he's going to find much more danger than he might have expected. It's a good thing Taskmaster's ability to memorize and perfectly emulate just about anything from his long history as a villain allows him a crazy-wild ability to improvise. He's going to need it.
MacKay has a strikingly deft ability to frame the central action of a story without all the dead weight that usually accompanies an action serial. There was no introduction to Taskmaster's arrival in Korea and really no specific reason why he's there. Through the specific wit of Taskmaster's first-person narration, the story is interesting enough that finding out what the hell is going on is part of the fun. It's a format that works really, really well in MacKay's Black Cat series. It works every bit as well here as Taskmaster makes use of clever gadgets to tumble his way through an adventure overseas.
Vitti has done his research. The establishing shots of various locations in South Korea actually look like locations in South Korea. It helps lock-in a sense of intrepid adventure...and Vitti is really good with the action as well. There's a combat scene near the end of the issue featuring a really stylish layout outlining the various fighting styles Taskmaster has picked-up from various heroes. Vitti has a sharp sense of action pacing that spends just enough time on every scene to engage the reader without slowing down the story's pulse.
There's a really good fusion of artist and writer in this series. MacKay knows exactly how far to push the strangeness of the story. Vitti knows just how far to go with the comic end of it all to keep from overpowering the action. It's very precise chemistry that has served the series well so far. Given this creative team's appeal, it's not hard to imagine this being an ongoing companion to MacKay's Black Cat series. The two titles complement each other. Marvel's heroic villains have always been interesting. Give them the right angle, and they become perfect central characters.
