Let’s start with that cover! My goodness I can’t get over how great that looks. If I were Valiant I would be throwing Mico Suayan’s cover on a mug, shirt and even a poster. In a way it does capture the essences of the first act of this issue. One important thing to note is that if you’re reading Armor Hunters you need to read issue #3 first or you’ll spoil that issue for yourself. With that said the issue begins with a look at Gin-Gr’s past. The first nine pages are all without dialogue as Matt Kindt steps back and let’s artist Stephen Segovia drive the story with his visuals. Gin-Gr’s story is pretty sad and we’re not the only ones that feel that way as it cuts to Livewire. I won’t say anything more about this because again you need to read Armor Hunters #3 in order to understand.
The rest of the issue shows the Eternal Warrior and Ninjak trying to finish off the rest of the hounds and finding it to be more difficult than their last batch. Of course the lava may have something to do with it. Once they’re done they’re summoned to help in the final battle against the Armor Hunters.
At first the silence that the issue starts with for Gin-Gr’s story (and I should mention there’s untranslated alien symbols) threw me off. It slowed down the pace of the story and since I read this right after Armor Hunters #3, I was taken back a bit. But there’s a beauty in those pages as we see the life of one of these alien attackers. Gin-Gr has by far done the most damage and so to see her life… well it’s hard to root for X-O and Unity to just kill her off given her own misfortunes.
Stephen Segovia is another artist that I never knew of until he came to Valiant. Looking at his credits I’m sure I’ve seen his art before, but it didn’t stand out until now. Now I know his name. Now I want to follow his work more and I can’t wait to see what else he has in store for the Valiant U. I think Unity is a great title for him because he gets to dip into all corners of the universe and in a way groom the universe. I look at Unity almost as if it’s the Valiant Universe in one book. It touches everything and can be a driving force for everything as well. He’s a great fit for the title and complements the work that Doug Braithwaite is doing on Armor Hunters.
This week both Armor Hunters and Unity surprised me by being different. They weren’t the stock standard event books and they were even different from their own previous issues. That’s actually pretty impressive that both managed to do that and still deliver. If you’re just reading Unity then fear not you’re still in for one hell of story this month.
Score: 4/5
Writer: Matt Kindt Artist Stephen Segovia Publisher: Valiant Comics Price: $3.99 Release Date: 8/13/14 Format: Ongoing; Print/Digital