Taskmaster #2 – Review

By: Fred Van Lente (writer), Jefte Palo (art), Jean-Francois Beaulieu (colors) & Dave Lanphear (letters)

The Story: Taskmaster runs into trouble against Mexican mercenaries wearing death masks!

What’s Good: One of the best experiences in comics is to read something where you can tell that the creators had a GREAT time writing/drawing the comic book.  Not to imply an occasional lack of passion from creators or that they allow a “time to make the donuts” attitude to sometimes pervade their Marvel/DC superhero work (Never, never….), but while reading most comics you don’t get a mental image of the creators giggling at how clever the comic is.  It would be highly surprising to know that Van Lente didn’t have a serious case of the giggles while he wrote this….

In this issue, we continue seeing Taskmaster on the run from the ORG who has put out a bounty on him that causes all sorts of groups to come out of the woodwork to collect his head (Hydra, AIM and all sorts of whacky groups that FVL just made up last issue).  This time he comes face to face with the Don of the Dead who uses funny/clever/great Spanglish dialog like, “So.  El Mastro de Task.  Ju face the Don of the Dead in Final Combat.  What ju say to THAT, hanh?”  Mind you, this is coming from a dude wearing a death facemask and a mariachi outfit.  Brilliant…

What’s more, the serious aspect of the story is not lost in the silly fun.  FVL hits on all the important aspects of Taskmaster’s character such as showing that although he lost his memories, his abnormal muscle memory allows his fingers to automatically do things like dial telephones and withdraw cash from ATMs.  There is also a very good “big story” revelation on the final page that ensures that this miniseries isn’t just fun for fun’s sake.