It's good to see Marvel using a big crossover to launch a new series, and even with some slight irregularities, this is an okay issue. Read Full Review

Not quite as good as the first issue, but still fairly enjoyable. This started out pretty interesting with Diamondback, but it did lose me a bit with Spider-Woman infiltrating the building later on. Hopefully this is just a minor bump in the road.

Okay, I’m struggling a bit here.

Jess is my fave, and I don’t think she’s always been well served. I hated the Hopeless run, and whilst I mostly enjoyed the Pacheco run it didn’t hold the same excitement on a second read. I’m a fan since the original days and here, we’re getting something that feels like it could deliver something special but is, imo, let down by missteps.

I loved seeing Jess going Old Skool, actually conducting an investigation and going under cover, but it was all for naught when an accomplished spy unwittingly tripped a sensor. It made her look duff. I could accept that the trauma of her kid going missing had made her sloppy but there was nothing in the script to suggest that. Also I had secretly believed that Jess somehow used her bio-electric (not kinetic) powers as a form of stealth, so that’s on me. Boo, though. At another point Jess calls Logan “surly” when I would argue understandably pissed off. Jess has always been the outlier voice seeing others with empathy, so her response seemed weird. Plus, if you’re going to complain that family chit-chat is ruining the urgency of your mission, then why devise a plan that involves waiting until the next day and hiding in a toilet, when your own gliding powers and super hearing will get the job done far more quickly?

In general I did feel that Jessica’s voice was clearer in this issue, less flouncy and more to the point. The art is mostly great too, capturing the dynamics of the fight with the Hydra goons, and some great “camera” angles.

Yet, still, I’m not really feeling Jess’s mission. I think it’s because I don’t understand how she feels about it, or why she has focused on Hydra. If only she knows her son has gone, Carol seemingly providing confirmation that there is something stranger than a mere kidnapping, then why isn’t she questioning the mystics? I feel that there is a clue we haven’t been given and I’m hoping (we’re half way through here) that it’s not a complete info dump at the end of this limited series. What power do Hydra have to alter the memories of anyone that might remember Gerry? If they don’t, why isn’t Jess looking elsewhere? There’s too many questions surrounding Jess’s actions because she isn’t giving us squat. Like in issue one, outside the club she derides the bad men for being bad, nothing about her fears for the kid if Hydra have him. In the club she tells Diamondback that Hydra are especially nasty terrorists and yet says nothing about her son which was her reason for being there. She doesn’t seem to be very focused. Again, I could accept that, if it were presented that way. I get that we have to await the outcome of the mystery but presenting us with Jessica’s internal conflict doesn’t preclude that.

The only new information we got in this issue is that Typhon are in cahoots with Hydra and Diamondback. It felt like we could have had something richer or more compelling. I’m of a mind that the clunky hints about Green Mamba better be red herrings because they’re so on the nose, but at the moment the journey is what concerns me. In her book I am able to understand the motivations of Diamondback but left uncertain of what is truly motivating Jessica.

I know I have been a bit negative but I want this book to succeed. I genuinely believe we could end up with a smart and involving portrayal of Jess and it’s looking promising, but we’re not quite there. It will be interesting to see what we get once the crossover event is done with but this has some ambition that it just needs to fulfil a bit more.







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One problem with Gang War is a really unclear idea of what action is happening. Sometimes it seems that everyone is fighting in the streets everywhere, and it's chaos to the point where you can drop a guy off a skyscraper in the financial district and no one will notice. But here we also have a big corporate building exterior and interior where everything looks like a normal work day. I guess for a big crossover it's better not to be too specific and let writers use the situation however fits their plot.