Comic review #2 – Taskmaster

A few months back, I was talking with one of my co-workers about the TV programme “Heroes” and I said that I’d given up on it partway through the second season as I didn’t find the new characters interesting.

He then told me that the characters had just gotten silly later in the programme’s run, remarking that there had been one who could duplicate people’s skills just by watching them.

“That’s not so silly”, I said, “There’s a supervillain who’s been around since 1980 who can do that.”

The villain in question is Taskmaster. The premise is that his “photographic reflexes” give him the ability to reproduce any skill or fighting style, that he sees.

And rather than using his powers to rob banks/take over the world, he uses them to act as personal trainer for supervillains’ henchmen. 

(He still wears a skintight costume with a cloak though. There’s only so many comic rules you can break.)

And now they’ve given him his own limited series.  

And it’s actually very good.

In some ways , it reminds me of what one would get if Tarantino wrote a superhero comic – there’s as much violence and mayhem as one would expect from a guy with a big sword fighting hordes of ninjas in a diner.

There’s dark humour (a skull faced Mexican drugs baron called “Don of the Dead” features.)

But there’s also a lot of pathos – Taskmaster is a man who can remember any fighting technique he’s ever seen, but he can’t remember his own name or who his family are.

Well worth a read.