Bloodshot Reborn #12 Review: The Analog Man Versus The Shadowmen

Bloodshot Reborn continues the post-Apocalyptic Analog Man arc with a huge battle against the Shadowmen gang.

Bloodshot Reborn #12
Written by Jeff Lemire
Art by Lewis Larosa
Published by Valiant Entertainment

Bloodshot Reborn #12 is not on sale until April 20, so this advance review may contain spoilers!

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The first chapters of “The Analog Man” set up Bloodshot’s role as a family man and community leader in a wasteland settlement who helps old friend Ninjak to fight fascists in a walled Los Angeles patrolled by X-O Manowar drone armors and coated in “goo-tech” nanomachines. Last issue, he lost his beloved wife, Magic, to a raid by the Shadowmen gang and swore revenge.

This issue spends the bulk of its time on Bloodshot’s destruction of a cell of Shadowmen, including jumping out of a plane without a parachute and a sword fight against nine armed men and the giant who leads them. In his dying breath, the leader clues Bloodshot and Ninjak that “The Man In The Tower” has been pulling everyone’s strings this whole time, and the heroes head back to L.A. to solve this mystery or die trying.

Bloodshot is a character that could so easily be a boring adolescent snuff film, but almost all of his writers since Valiant’s relaunch have used his violence to tell creative stories about identity, duty, courage, and leadership. With the Bloodshot Reborn renaming, writer Jeff Lemire has found Bloodshot’s heart, and it’s not just a meat pump behind that red circle between his swollen pectorals. Magic, a woman who learned all about this cybernetic assassin and loved him all the same, gave his stories a new emotional relevance. Her death last issue still haunts the story, and most of the issue’s graphic scenes of violence are intercut with a page or two of her time spent playing chess with her husband. Bloodshot doesn’t have to yell that he’s doing it all for her – the reader knows how much these flashbacks inform his current pain. The gore – and reader beware, it is rendered in beautiful but graphic detail by Lewis Larosa – loses its provocative sting when seen in the context of this tragic wounded heart. “The Analog Man” is the best Bloodshot has been since his time with H.A.R.D. Corps or the Harbinger Wars.

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The Bottom Line: A satisfying fight scene that pulls love stories from his past and a mystery from his future makes Bloodshot’s latest chapter as the Analog Man a winner. Bloodshot Reborn #12 is available April 20 from Valiant Entertainment.

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