Grifter #3 – Review

By:  Nathan Edmondson (writer), Cafu (penciller), Jason Gorder (inker), Andrew Dalhouse (colorist)

The Story: Seriously, Cole—didn’t anyone tell you, “Bro’s before ho’s?”

The Review: Ah, the brother-versus-brother showdown.  Among classic fictional conflicts, there aren’t any much older, whether you’re talking Cain and Abel or Michael and Gob.  And when you couple it with the family-versus-justice dynamic, you can’t have anything but major tension to start with, whether it comes to any good or not.  The success of this end game largely depends on the character strength of the brothers themselves.

Right now, neither Cole nor kid brother Max have so enough going for them to make their confrontation all that intense.  We know close to nothing about Max, other than an indubitably loyalty to his military higher-ups, and with Cole, the best thing most of us can probably say about him is that we don’t not like him, which is not exactly the strongest resonance in the world.

Whatever true drama Edmondson achieves from the scene comes mostly from his writing.  In theory, he should have done a much better job than what we end up with.  His dialogue in past issues has been on point, snappy, and natural, so the switch to overly complicated, expository lines (“You want to talk about pacts?  How about shoulder-to-shoulder, forged in fire?  Stained with cordite.”) that feel even more inappropriate given the context of what’s happening.

Otherwise, Edmondson continues to craft a very layered, long-term plot.  This issue confirms our suspicions that the military knows far more about the neon-blue entities than they’ve let on, meaning their continued pursuit of Cole has little to do with a genuine belief that he’s a terrorist.  Their beef with him goes much deeper, in issue and in time (“There are no mere chances when dealing with operatives of his caliber, Staff Sergeant.”), than that.