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Kareem Ali 3.5

Book of Death: The Fall of Bloodshot #1

 

  • The good

    Gives a lot of hints about the contents of the Book of Death and some of the intriguing events that took place after Kay's death

  • The bad

    Like Bloodshot in this issue, the story wanders aimlessly and goes out with a slight wimper

  • The ugly

    • Book of Death: The Fall of Bloodshot #1 is a one-shot issue chronicling the fate of Bloodshot according to the Book of Death being carried by Tama, the Geomancer from the future. With the death of Kay at the hands of the Immortal Enemy a dark period filled with war, disease and every other calamity befell the Earth, and the mightiest were powerless to stop it or defeat the new enemy that would follow. This issue opens up with Bloodshot traveling while reminiscing about everything he saw during this war and contemplating how things will end for him. He didn’t just see his enemies fall but his friends as well, and all he can keep doing is moving forward and trying to forget. Even though there would be other armies eventually Bloodshot wouldn’t join any of them and would instead choose to become a pirate captain on the open seas. He became known as Captain Red Eyes with Armstrong as one of his crew. He specifically thinks of when they accosted Rampage’s ship to take all the fresh water on board since his ship was very low on it. They were successful, and to Bloodshot those were the good days. Things wouldn’t stay like that forever as other situations would deteriorate and he would have to continue traveling the Earth. What would ultimately be Bloodshot’s fate and could he survive the onslaught of havoc created by the Dark Geomancer and the Immortal Enemy?

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    The previous two issues connected to the Book of Death event were terrific, and the references to the fall of Valiant’s biggest characters had me intrigued. So I was looking forward to these one-shot stories that would detail what happened to each character, and with the first one being about Bloodshot I was really excited. This issue started after Bloodshot left any war effort against the Dark Geomancer or at least after most of his allies were killed. This made the start of this issue feel disconnected from what I assume would be the larger events in the Book of Death series nor does this even recap Bloodshot’s involvement in those events. Instead the focus was on his wanderings through the land avoiding anything to do with any of these events. It was already understood before this issue that Bloodshot had the potential to outlast other Valiant characters due to the healing ability of his nanites so I wasn’t surprised that this story would continue long after others met their fates. It was the manner in which this was done, and when Bloodshot wasn’t moping he was just caught up in random events that didn’t have a bigger context. Out of all the things I would’ve imagined Bloodshot doing becoming a pirate captain on a ship in the ocean wouldn’t have been high on the list. There were some good parts such as the references to armies forming with names associated with old allies or when he found an isolated tribe and lived with them for a time. But the bigger adventures felt too disjointed and were never elaborated on so they didn’t feel engrossing. It was slightly interesting to see the character’s final moments as the book title claimed it would do but instead of a fall it was more like a slow, almost agonizing decline.

     

    SUMMARY

     

    Book of Death: The Fall of Bloodshot #1 is an okay issue that doesn’t truly do Bloodshot justice as he wanders around getting caught up in random situations. Aside from him somehow being killed I understand the difficulty in chronicling the centuries he could survive but the events are too disjointed, and the disconnect from the big events in the Book of Death makes this feel like an issue of emo Bloodshot. There are some good moments as well as small hints of what occurred due to Dark Geomancer but not enough to make this engrossing. And Bloodshot definitely deserves better.

     

     

  • Rating ( 6.5 )
  • Total score 6.5

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