Imagine I was going to write a review, y’see, but then I told you I was going to write a review first. But it’s not that simple, I gotta read this comic first, right, so I sit down and I read the damn thing from front to back. Then I write this review, and you’ll read the review, it would appear, and it will be a review. There’ll be a rating at the top, there’ll be words down the bottom. It’ll be my little gift to you, okay, and we’ll then both have been a part of this review.

And this is how the narration goes for the whole damn comic.

Now, to be fair, I actually don’t mind the narration that much, I just enjoyed making fun of it, nothing personal. This comic goes over plenty of information more times than would ever be necessary. Does it feel like padding to make this need two issues? Yes. Does Bullseye ‘really’ appear in this comic? No, not really. Is it interesting? Pretty much, yeah, but it feels wasted. Is it good or bad? It’s complicated, can’t it be both? Let me explain.

This would probably have been a good short story. Maybe even a good comic, if this isn’t all the comic was. It’s just a guy chatting to. . . someone, and setting up this tale. Only at the end do we get the idea that Bullseye is about to kill a baseball player. It’s something that smart editing would have pared down to a few pages to make this a one-shot. Instead, we get this issue, bloated and eager to expand horizons, but it only left me wondering when the real story would start. It’s like a warm up act that just wouldn’t get off the stage.

I want Bullseye making with the kills, and though we get that at the start in staccato panels of pseudo-flashback, it’s not the real thing. It doesn’t count, cool as it is. This comic sells me on Bullseye and then talks about him instead of showing him. The most we see of him in action is a few pages of him on a couch watching a fly buzz around his dirty apartment. It’s just not enough, I’m sorry.

Martinbrough’s art is suggestively moody, even if there’s nothing to suggest. He draws a good page, and a plethora of no-name superheroes as they die, but he feels wasted here. I can only hope that this work will only lead him to more as I’d love to see him on the sorts of comics I like to read. Something pop and yet noir. He’d be a perfect fit.

This comic is all flirt and no action back home. It doesn’t even suggest an empty crack hotel that could be utilized at an hourly rate as you drunkenly stumble through on your way to nowhere in particular. It’s a shame because Huston can obviously turn a phrase, and he does some good writing here, and the art is good, but it’s just not exactly a good comic for what it sells itself as. It certainly isn’t what you think you’re buying, which is a Bullseye comic. Perhaps after all the set up, the next issue will be what we really want, but until then we’re stuck with this tease.