Poor Bruce Jones. He gets back to the conspiracy storyline, brings back in Doc Samson–reimagined as some kind of super-spy–and generally gets the series moving again towards something. Sure, Banner barely has anything to do but the narrative works. Jones splits it between Banner, Samson and Nadia (the Abomination’s wife) and ties them all together trying to get the mystery laptops to work.

All in all, the narrative is successful. Jones goes for an artful cliffhanger rather than a rewarding or intriguing one but artful’s okay.

But Deodato’s back on the art and he butchers it. The juxtaposed fight scenes are awful, the Doc Samson fight scene is awful, even the Banner sitting in a cafe is awful. Deodato misappropriates his artistic attentions. The fight scenes should be compelling, what with Jones’s placement of them in the narrative, instead they’re painful to the eye.

It’s a shame.

B- 

CREDITS

Split Decisions, Part One; writer, Bruce Jones; artist, Mike Deodato Jr.; colorist, Studio F; letterer, Cory Petit; editors, Jennifer Huang, Warren Simons, John Miesegaes and Axel Alonso; publisher, Marvel Comics.