Soldier Zero #4 – Review

By: Paul Cornell (writer), Javier Pina (art), Archie Van Buren (colors), Ed Dukeshire (letters) & Bryce Carlson (editor)

The Story: Big time throw down between the Soldier Zero/Stewart construct and the bad guy.  Or is he?

What’s Good: If you’re into sci-fi themed comics, there really aren’t too many outlets right now, so you might want to check this out.  This is an pretty solid issue that showcases a huge throw-down between our protagonist, Stewart, who is wearing a good suit of armor and the evil suit of armor that has taken as its host a decomposing policeman.  Ewwww!  Does that give him magical stink powers?

The battle itself is really nicely done and some of the events start to call into question whether Soldier Zero (which I think is the name of Stewart’s armor) is really a good guy.  Thus, it’s also open to interpretation whether the “bad guy” is really bad.  Nonetheless it is a good fight and there is just enough of this “shades of gray” drama that you know that things are not quite as simple as they seem.

I have no major complaints about the art.  I’m not measuring a spot on my wall for where a framed original page can go, but it is perfectly fine and tells the story nicely.  Many comic artists that are trying to do creative things on the page need to master good, basic storytelling first which is what we’re getting on Solider Zero right now.