By Dustin Cabeal

Things are making more sense in this issue, but I’ll say this as someone that didn’t read the past few Valiant events or the one-shot that preceded this series, I’m still lost when extra details are brought up. It’s not so bad when the story focuses on the task ahead of it, but when it attempts to add to the future Valiant world. That’s when my head turns to the side a little.

War Mother and her war son are captured and divided in this issue. We meet some funky bad guys that reminded me of the fireplace episode of Doctor Who. Then some time is spent with some kids that War Mother protects and one of them is a G.D. psycho just waiting to get his kill on. War Son has a freakout and starts feeling emotions and shit and then boom… cliffhanger.

It’s not that this is a bad story. Fred Van Lente is a solid writer, and he’s well adapted to the Valiant Universe. It’s just that there’s nothing particularly interesting about what’s happening. The villain still feels unrevealed, the small society has no personality and with only two issues left it leaves you to wonder if there is time for anything to pan out.

The art is beautiful. Stephen Segovia could tell a story with just paper bags, and it would look damn good. He and other artists at Valiant have developed a house style, and so anytime his name is on a book I want to at least look at it and soak in the pages. Segovia and Roberto de la Torre excel with the art in this issue. The panel choices are effective and convey the story clearly; it’s just that the narrative inches forward leaving only a handful of good scenes in this issue for either artist to tackle.

I’m probably not going to review the rest of the series. I’ll read it, but it's doubtful that there’s going to be any big changes in the next two issues. If there are, I’ll be back to cover it, but if not then you can assume my scores for the last two will be the same as this review. It’s an average comic, but more than just being average it reveals a growing problem at Valiant, too many of their mini-series and limited series are forgettable. I hope they’ll get back to the time a few years ago when they released nine solid titles each month, and you wanted to read all nine.

Score: 3/5

War Mother #2
Valiant Comics