Written by Gerry Duggan and Geoffrey Thorne
Drawn by Paco Diaz
Published by Marvel Comics

PREVIOUSLY: SOLO #1

Solo prepares for his new mission for S.H.I.E.L.D. Out in some desert there’s a biker gang calling themselves The Zoo Family, who have gotten a hold of a large batch of various high-tech extraterrestrial weapons, which they illegally sell to various terrorists groups. I have to say right off the bat that this sounds like a sensible plan. With all of the various alien invasions that happen within the Marvel Universe on a regular basis, you figure that some of this stop must get left behind and scooped up by dubious figures who would try to make a profit off of them. Anyway, a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent has been undercover with the gang for awhile now, but he suspects that his cover is blown, or is in danger of being blown soon, hence why Solo has been contact to sneak into the Zoo Family’s base, locate the agent, and get him out.

Of course, Solo is still unaware that he was chosen for this mission specifically because he’s considered “expendable.” He still believes that it’s because of his skills. Well, we get several pages of seeing the Zoo Family in the midst of making a sale, showing off their merchandise to an interested buyer. The Solo makes contact with the undercover agent and prepares to get him out, except Solo’s poor-planning leads to them to be discovered, and now it look like he and the agent will have to shoot their way out of the base.

Another heavy action-oriented issue, lots of gun play. Thankfully Paco Diaz is a very capable artist, so the action if easy to follow. Through the dialog between Solo and the agent (not to mention Solo and his baby mama, Cat, who he speaks to on the phone before the mission), we see more of his overconfidence (he seems to be the only one who doesn’t know what his reputation is), as even the agent he’s supposed to rescue is disturbed when he realizes who Solo is.

My only real complaint is that throughout the issue whenever someone is supposed to be saying curse-word, it’s covered with a black-box saying REDACTED. It seems clever the first few times, but gets old really quickly.

Nevertheless, writers Duggan and Thorne suitably rise the tension throughout the issue right up to the dramatic cliffhanger. So this issue gets another B+

SOLO #2

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