I guess Brubaker has seen The Rock. Maybe he’s hoping no one else remembers it….

It’s a bridging issue, which I suppose is to be expected–it is midway through an arc after all–but the places where one would expect Brubaker to excel, he fumbles. He wraps a flashback into the narrative and switches perspective to surprise the reader–the reader who hasn’t seen The Rock–but all those tricks don’t make up for him flubbing the one non-action scene in the book.

Velvet meets up with her former boss in a peculiar situation and every few panels it seems like Brubaker might do some character work or at least a good talking heads scene. But he never does. It’s just exposition about her status as a rogue agent. It’s really too bad.

Still, the Epting art on the action throughout is fantastic.

While derivative, Velvet works fine.