Written by John J. McLaughlin
Drawn by Jon Malin and Rob Liefeld
Published by Image Comics

Let’s take it back to 2012, the 20th anniversary of Image Comics. To mark the occasion, Rob Liefeld launched a new Youngblood ongoing series.

Yes, again.

This would be the fifth attempt at an ongoing Youngblood series, two previous versions each lasted eleven issues, one lasted nine issues, and one lasted only two issues. This series would begin with issue 71 because, supposedly, if you count up every comic book published up to this point with Youngblood in the title, including various one-shots, miniseries, and the Team Youngblood ongoing series, that would be 70 issues.

Rob hired John J McLaughlin, a screenwriter best known at the time for cowriting the hit film Black Swan, and artist Jon Malin for this new series,

Our POV character is Gail Cook, a reporter for Entertainment Now magazine who has just been given the assignment to follow the newest Youngblood team for around a month to write a puff piece article about them to gain them some good publicity. It’s implied that this latest version of the team isn’t very highly thought of, despite consisting of veterans Diehard, Vogue, Cougar, Photon, and Shaft. Except there have been some changes since we last saw this team, as Photon is now a female (and yes, this is implied to be the original Photon, although the sex change is unexplained) and Shaft is some new man who’s been hired to lead the team and given the same codename and a similar costume (blue, instead of red). This is because Jeff Terrell, the original Shaft, has quit the team and returned to being an FBI agent for unspecified reasons (we get a brief shot of him investigating some murder).

Gail is introduced to a woman named Handler, who is in charge of Youngblood’s publicity, and she takes her to Youngblood’s headquarters at the Pentagon. We see that the team members don’t particularly respect Shaft, with Cougar derisively referring to him as “Not Shaft” and everyone showing up late to his meeting. When Gail arrives, Handler introduces her, and then an alarm goes off, meaning it’s time for a mission, so Gail is taken with them in their flying carrier. They go to a mall in Northern Virginia where a horde of identical blonde White women are going crazy and attacking everyone.

That’s right, attack of the killer blondes.

The issue ends with a cliffhanger involving Badrock.

The story itself is okay, although not exactly groundbreaking. For a big relaunch of Image Comics’ premier title, a group of identical blondes isn’t the most creative threat. Some of the characterizations feel a bit off, like Vogue being overly flirtatious, first with Shaft and then with Diehard. She also talks about growing up in Russia and idolizing American celebrities like Pam Anderson and Jenny McCarthy, which makes her seem shallower than she was previously written (and also fudges the timeline of the title since it debuted in 1992).

But the weakest link of this book is the art. Jon Malin’s artwork is a bit stiff, like an amateur version of Rob Liefeld. I don’t see much in this issue to attract new fans, but the Youngblood fans who have been there since the beginning and throughout the decades will want to check this out.