I know I said I wasn’t going to pick this up…but I did say that my devotion to the character U.S. Agent (Marvel - I’m tellin’ ya - I’ve got the pitch of a lifetime for that guy - call me :) ) was a sickness…so I couldn’t help but check it out.

I’m glad to say that I didn’t find his issue as annoyingly bad as the previous two. In fact, I kinda like this one. There is some interesting stuff going on in the title, but the Wrecking Crew angle just makes me feel like Omega Flight is a B list team, since they’re fighting B to C level villains…and they are a major threat to them. Maybe that’s just me…but there you have it.

Now, moving on to other points of interest in the series, The new Guardian is introduced in this issue (after the teaser of him in issue two), and I have to say - that’s a very interesting angle to take the character. If I was a Canadian, I would probably be pretty pissed that they were treating my country’s version of Captain America the way that they are - but I’m not Canadian…and frankly, any Canadians that have a problem with it can take their Universal Healthcare, Sane Lawmakers, and Legal Downloads of “whatever the hell they want as long as it’s for personal use” and bite me. (That’s a little joke, folks. We love Canada here at Forever Geek. We even have a Canadian on staff…so no hate mail, ok?)

All joking aside, this issue was the strongest effort by the creative team yet, and from a creative team aspect, I only have one major complaint…INK THE DAMN ART. Seriously…you never really understand the lost art of inking, until you see a book that has gone from pencils to colors without that vital element included. It brings the overall quality of the entire book down, and it needs to be corrected. Not just in future issues…but in the inevitable trade paperback as well…this book (hell ANY book) deserves to look as good as it can, and inking is necessary to achieve that.

One other issue of concern for me is Beta Ray Bill. I don’t know that much about the character, and even after his introduction in this issue, I have to say - I don’t know much about the character. Like, why he looks like a mutant horse dressed up as Thor. I could wikipedia it, and I probably will, but I should be able to just get that information from the book I’m reading. Now, I have to give the creative team a slide on this, though - because they didn’t discover they were working on a mini-series until they had already layed things out, and I would imagine that made them have to condense stuff a lot more than the would have…and I would bet that we’d have gotten a better intro to Bill if they’d been given the ongoing they were promised.

So, in closing, this was a much better issue than the two previous books, and I just might grab issue #4 when it hits the shelves next month. So…way to go guys, you’ve kinda won me over on this thing…and I really wanted to hate it…but PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE throw some depth onto U.S. Agent will ya? There’s more to the guy that just being an ass. (Again - Marvel - I have THE pitch of the decade for U.S. Agent - Call me :) )

Grade: B+