They’re not exactly paying attention to what’s going on. It’s understandable. They’re all fighting. And they’re all fighting amongst each other. There are some guards in there. There are some guards in the prison yard. But no one seems to be paying a whole lot of attention to that, even though they’ve got firearms. Then the sleek and expensive-looking aircraft arrives. Things get pretty brutal from there in Blood Squad Seven: Strike File. The young superhero series gets its first big annual-style one-shot written by Joe Casey with art by Paul Fry. Color comes to the page courtesy of Francesco Segala. 

The aircraft in question happens to be carrying a group of super powered heroes. One might think that they were being sent in to quell the prison riot. One of might be correct about that. But there’s a bigger concern going on. There was a man who used to be a hero. And he’s become quite dangerous. He is known as Man of War. He’s got the word war written right across his chest and he’s carrying a pair of semi automatic rifles. One in each hand. Not exactly practical. But then, what he is planning on doing isn’t necessarily practical either.

The idea of hunting down as super powered former hero is something that’s been circulating around the action genre for decades. Casey mixes a few things into the narrative that make it feel considerably more sophisticated than Rambo, but it is still essentially the same idea. There’s a lot of drama going in around the edges of everything. The world in which it’s all taking place, feels almost indistinguishable from a number of other dark, superhero worlds. The action isn’t necessarily placed in a very novel contact, which makes it cooler together with a lot of other entries into the genre.

Fry modulates quite well from action to drama. There’s a sense of atmosphere about the drop out, which rests quite tensely on the page. The action, though it isn’t necessarily written in a way that fuels all that original, manages to make any impact on the page. there’s a really impressive kind of kinetics going on in the Action Third all feel very well accomplished. There is much going on here that is impressive. Sefala’s colors amplify moods, render the details around the action in a way that makes for a very crisper visual field or what is essentially just another superhero comic book.

Casey and Company have a long way to go before the series really starts to feel like it’s on the thing. It’s echoing so many other series of so many other errors that it hasn’t really managed to found a ton space yet. But it’s still relatively early on, and there’s a lot of things that could happen as things progress into the future for a series which seems to have gained quite a bit of momentum. It’s nice to see them, taking a moment for a standalone story involving some of the tensor aspects and implications of the superhero genre.

Grade: B