I can’t be the only one that kind of forgot what the last page of the first issue was right? Because I was sorely confused when I picked up this issue and spent the first few pages wondering when exactly Luther and Petra teamed up with Delilah? There did seem to be a lot left unsaid to the reader between the two issues, but let’s be honest… we don’t really need more talky-talky do we? We come here to rock and clearly Justin Jordan is aware of that so he cleverly recaps everything you need to know with comments and dialogue that assumes you’re on board with everything already. The trio is in Russia to meet the Gardener and get Cain’s location from him. It becomes clear that Delilah A) has been alive a long fucking time and B) has persuasive powers. She might be doing good, but there’s no fucking way I trust her. Thankfully Petra doesn’t like her either which lends to some hilarious moments.
Eventually they find the path to the Gardener and it’s paved with skulls… like a lot of fucking skulls sunken into the ground. You have to kind of wonder if these dudes are actually just in charge of population control because they’ve killed a lot of people and if they didn’t then we’d have a few billion more people on this planet… metaphorically speaking of course.
A fight breaks out and Luther attempts to go easy on the Gardner which Delilah notices and Petra comments on saying that he still thinks he can get through to these fuckers. That is what makes Luther different after all, his heart and his effort to bring them back to humanity and ultimately his grief when he fails.
Some people will be pretty fucking pissed with this issue because the Gardner only speaks in Russian and Justin Jordan teamed up with Steve Orlando (great up and coming writer by the way) to not translate the dialogue. It’s legit Russian, but unless you read Russian you’re going to be putting shit into Google Translate or just doing what I did and giving a big ole smile and enjoying how cool that is. Personally I love when shit isn’t always translated because that’s life. I don’t know what my wife is saying half the time because I don’t know Spanish and suck at learning languages so not knowing what’s being said is the norm for me; so this comic didn’t faze me, but I’m sure some of you were pissed. Just appreciate that they could do that.
Not that it truly matters. I’m sure there’s some good stuff there because it’s Jordan, but ultimately we’re just here to see Luther fight and man if you thought that Tradd Moore was running out of tricks… he is not. I mean this guy is just on another level compared to other comic book artists working today. I know everyone loved him at Marvel, but when he’s allowed to work freely and just go off on a page it’s fucking magical. Really I think I would have to make up new words in order to describe his art at this point. It’s really fucking qrata! (Yeah just made that up… it sucks, deal with it)
One day I’ll go back through this series and break it down page by page, panel by panel and dissect why it’s so fucking good, but for now you’ll just have to deal with this gushing review about three creators and their support team that have managed to produce not one, but three series that are instant classics. I’m not being cheeky or just throwing that around casually, I would at gun point tell you that the Luther Strode series is an instant classic because it proves it with each and every issue.
Score: 5/5
The Legacy of Luther Strode #2 Writer: Justin Jordan Artist: Tradd Moore Colorist: Felipe Sobreiro Publisher: Image Comics Price: $3.50 Release Date: 6/24/15 Format: Mini-Series; Print/Digital