by Fred Van Lente
(Author), Jefte Palo (Illustrator)
Publisher : Marvel (May 18, 2011)
Softcover, 112 pages
The Taskmaster is a minor character from a forgettable
Avengers storyline, who has made good in modern comics - as happens from time
to time, think The Punisher. From the beginning he was a different type of
supervillain, blessed/cursed with photographic reflexes, which allows him to
mimic any fighting style he witnesses at the cost of his long and short-term
memory. Instead of a criminal enterprise, the Taskmaster earned his daily bread
by training henchmen for terrorist organizations and supervillains. The
character has always popped up in strange places.
The story is that for reasons unknown a billion dollar
bounty is put on the Taskmaster’s head. To discover who and why, he has to
fight hordes of his former students and delves into his own forgotten past. I
liked the story here a lot. Centering on the Taskmaster, a man who constantly
forgets huge chunks of his past, cannot be easy, but the revelations in this
mini-series are fairly big, interesting and make sense within the context of
the Marvel Universe.
The problem I have with this story is not the
excellent art, nor most of the developments, but the ridiculousness of the main
villain, Redshirt the Uber Henchmen with his organization Minions International
Liberation Front (MILF) who is attempting to destroy the Taskmaster. I don’t
mind some over-the-top action in a superhero comic, but this injection of
silliness is just off for what ends up a pretty tragic story for the
Taskmaster. Not only is this villain pretty stupid, the author feels the need to
explain this obvious joke to us, thinking that we must all be morons for
reading his material.
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