Mercenaries #1 (Dynamite – Reed / Salazar / Fajardo / Bowland) – This book is based on the best-selling third person shooter video game series from Pandemic by the same name. As far as comic companies go, Dynamite is the king of the hill when it comes to taking other non-comic media based licenses and turning them into incredible comics (Battlestar Galactica, Lone Ranger, Xena and the upcoming much anticipated Zorro to name a few). So given what I know about the ability and skills that are housed in Dynamite Entertainment, I must assume that this is the best possible comic adaptation of a shooter-based video game. If you are a fan of the game or know the basis for the book, it is exactly what you are looking for. All action, with just a little bit of story to string along the scenes (not unlike any Steven Seagal movie) into a linear sequence. Edgar Salazar does an outstanding job of having nice crisp art that helps the action flow with very little issues. Imagine you really a really good high-action, gun-toting, martial-arts, pedal-to-the-floor B-movie and they turned into a comic… well this is it. Well done, for what it was.
Grade: B
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