This comic is noteworthy, not for the story itself, but surprisingly for the discussion in the letter column.  The story itself is interesting enough, carrying on the story of the previously introduced Soviet super-soldier masquerading as an all-American girl, but the description in the letter column is even more interesting.  After this second issue, the creative team aims to leave the series for a year, in the European style of comic producing as they say, and to collect each sequence of yearly two issues together into one trade paperback.  It is an interesting approach, though not one that would seem to be as successful in the saturated comic book market in the United States.  In terms of storytelling it also leaves some unresolved questions.

The series as before focuses on Red One as she is after the Carpenter, a megalomaniacal religious nut who is waging war on those in California who he deems to be impure due to their lifestyle choices (he mostly leads attacks against homosexuals in this issue.)  While this is an incendiary enough point for American life, both for this setting in the 1970s as well as for modern life, it also tends to not ever really make a point in relation to this villian, other than to highlight that such behavious is bad.  Equally, the series teeters on making some kind of commentary about the porn industry, either pro- or anti-, but this too mostly comes off as shooting the center without making its mind where it stands on the issue.  The overall effect is one of stereotypical caricatures.

Despite these drawbacks, the issue still manages to succeed to a degree, and in large part thanks to its main character.  While the creative team vaccillates a little in its overall message, the main character is written in a way to look past those defects, as she is an approachable character even despite her talents.  The series lacks a fcous, both in its message and (according to the letter col) in its delivery, but at the very least the creative team has managed in two issues to introduce a character that has a lot of potential for other stories to be told.

Story: Xavier Dorison Art: Terry Dodson
Story: 8.1  Art: 8.1  Overall: 8.1 Recommendation: Read

Image provided Graphic Policy with a free copy for review