Written and drawn by Rob Liefeld
Published by Image Comics

This issue begins the latest incarnation of Rob Liefeld’s Bloodstrike. Love him or hate him, Rob Liefeld has his fans (of which I am one of them). And, at this point in his career, that’s specifically who he makes his comics for. So therefor I won’t bother recapping the previous incarnations of this title, The only people who are picking this book up are already fans, and know who Bloodstrike is.

This story is called THE JUNK. And y’know on things that “junk” is a slang-term for? Yeah, that’s what this title refers to. The story is that Bloodstrike was “off the books”, on some secret mission in Tokyo. He infiltrated the fortress of a deadly woman named Tragedy Ann, and then after easily slicing and dicing his way through her various guards (which includes ninjas, of course, because if you’re a villain in Japan you have to have a bunch of ninjas to protect you), she gets the drop on him, knocks him out, hacks off the entire lower half of his torso, and then leaves the rest of him chained to a wall in her dungeon.

The first big shock of this series comes with Bloodstrike calls for help. We see Cabbot back at Bloodstrike HQ being sent to go help Bloodstrike. The reason this is shocking is because, last we saw, Cabbot was Bloodstrike. But if he’s not now, then who the heck is that guy in the mask? Cabbot refers to him as a “rookie” and suits up to go save him. We cut to a cell where we see Bloodwulf, Liefeld’s analog of DC Comics’ Lobo, naked with two equally naked women, whom he proceeds to eat (thankfully, this is off-panel).

Cabbot teleports to the dungeon, along with some machine that helps regrow the rest of Bloodstrike’s body…except for his penis. Now Cabbot wants to leave, but Bloodstrike doesn’t want to until he gets his penis back. And so another fight ensues. And then other members of the original Bloodstrike team shows up. And in an epilogue we see Tragedy Ann delivering Bloodstrike’s penis in a jar to some woman who appears to have a personal motive against him. And somehow this penis is the key to his destruction.

Okay, this story isn’t winning any Eisner awards, but this is one tripped out crazy book. I enjoyed it. And if you like action, gore, and have a fucked up sense of humor, I bet you will like this too.

BLOODSTRIKE #1

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