Creative Staff:
Story: Donny Cates, Eliot Rahal
Art: Geoff Shaw
Colors: Lauren Affe
What They Say:
Indebted superheroes keep turning up dead before the Paybacks can collect. What’s worse, Night Knight suspects there’s a traitor in their midst. In perilous circumstances like these, our heroes do the only sensible thing . . . they split up! Hey, these assets ain’t gonna repossess themselves!
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
The Paybacks has been a pretty fun book in its first two issues, though it has a kind of rough and tumble approach that in some ways is just off-putting for me. I get its tone and what it’s trying to do, but the approach is one that generally doesn’t click for me when you get down to it. What keeps drawing me back are a couple of different things. First, I really like the overall idea of how the financials work here and how Pierce operates since he derives his power from heroes, so having them offed is not a good thing. The other is that there’s an almost Suicide Squad kind of feeling to it in a way as we get a lot of heroes getting offed and some dangerous moments for our leads in the Paybacks. And life ain’t easy for them.
This installment doesn’t wait too long to deal with what Night Knight discovered about Miss Adventure the last time around, namely in that she’s dead. What we get here is an origin story, which does feel a little odd to get, as she explains why she’s both dead and not. It’s a decent enough tale that riffs on familiar origin material, but it’s the post-reveal that’s great as she shows why she’s such a badass with Night Knight. Who really does deserve regular ass kickings with how he acts. The nature of their adventure with what they’re doing is dealt with nicely as they’re finally drawn back by the doctor since Driver is getting pretty antsy as things are getting worse all around. The team dynamic is one that just works so well here as they know they aren’t heroes in this instance yet end up still bonding in the strangest ways. Ice cream Wednesday is just super extra special though.
Amid all of this, we also start to get an idea of what’s going on with the group that’s targeting the heroes that the Paybacks are trying to collect on. When one of the pairings goes off on their next mission, they come across the actual killer still in the act, or at least going through his whole graffiti portion of the act after the killing. This makes for a great action sequence overall with its comedy as he tries to escape but is unable to due to interference with the teleportation device. What it does reveal is that there is a larger game afoot here about who the real killer is. Since they were going on the presumption of a single killer causing the problem, the idea that it could be an operation almost like theirs but with a different goal is pretty damn unsettling. Even for this group of oddballs that aren’t quite sure what their real place in all of this will be at the end of it.
In Summary:
Paybacks has another solid installment, even if I do feel kind of weird about it in a way that I can’t quite pinpoint. I like the raw and rough nature of it with the dialogue, the artwork and the snark in general that we get since it’s balanced with some really amusing humor and lightness. The whole social aspect of the group is hilarious to watch, especially since it just ticks off Driver in a big way as he’s just wanting the job done and none of this other crap. This issue starts to reveal more of what’s going on and it’s definitely curious, even if it doesn’t truly reveal anything useful beyond it not just being a single individual. The whole Racer X angle/comment was spot on though and just adds another nice little layer to it all. I’m definitely curious to see what comes next, and to see if Night Knight can recover enough for someone else to give him a well deserved beating.
Grade: B
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: Dark Horse Comics
Release Date: November 18th, 2015
MSRP: $3.99
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