Ninjak #18 Review: Back To A Future
By Matt Conner
Ninjak #18 returns to a future glimpsed in Book Of Death and teams our favorite ninja with the Eternal Warrior in a surprisingly effective buddy mission.
Ninjak #18
Written by Matt Kindt
Art by Khari Evans and Andres Guinaldo
Published by Valiant Entertainment
Ninjak #18 doesn’t go on sale until August 10, so beware of spoilers below!
Ninjak has been a great title, taking a cheeky British ninja from memorable guest appearances in X-O Manowar and Unity and giving him a breadth of adventures from assassination to undercover infiltration to a rescue mission in Hell. This week, Matt Kindt takes Ninjak to the time just before his death for one last ride in “The Fist And The Steel.”
More from Comics
- X-Men: 6 reasons why Marvel’s mutants are the best superhero team
- Harley Quinn renewed for a fifth season on Max (and it’s well-deserved)
- Marvel Comics announces seven important X-Men comic books
- The X-Men were betrayed by Captain America in Uncanny Avengers
- Spider-Man: Miles and Peter team-up for their first ongoing series
Decades after Colin King’s pyrrhic victory over Roku, Ninjak meets up with his old Unity teammate, the Eternal Warrior, on a train. King’s persona non grata with the latest government, but Gilad needs his help to rescue the Geomancer of that time from one of the creepy villains from Ninjak’s first story arc. As the mission moves on, it ties in to some of the supernatural elements from Ninjak’s second arc, and the back-up story set in the present suggests that something ugly in the third arc’s mission to the Deadside has followed Colin King home.
Matt Kindt is writing a long game worthy of Chris Claremont here. New readers could enjoy this issue, and they should be encouraged to start here. But if you’ve read any of the last 17 issues you’ve read before, that’s going to get rewarded somewhere on these pages. And the relationship between Ninjak and the Eternal Warrior is great. These guys got along well in Unity, and the tone of their work together is a clear contrast to the respectful distrust we saw in Ninjak’s team-up in X-O Manowar this spring.
The choice to set this story in the future may seem odd given the recent culmination of Bloodshot’s team-up with Ninjak in the Analog Man arc, but as an action/espionage book, it’s not covering the same themes of fate and survival that its sci-fi brother book did.
The Bottom Line: Matt Kindt’s intricate plotting in Ninjak is coming to a satisfying climax, and readers are encouraged to check this out regardless of previous experience with Valiant’s version of the mouthy assassin.