It’s safe to say that we all love Batroc the Leaper right? He’s a silly concept but because he’s so silly we can’t find anything wrong with it. I mean think about it: He’s just a Frenchman who is good at Parkour and martial arts. Not the strongest portrayal of the French, nor is it the best villain idea ever. But whenever he shows up in a Captain America book I can’t do anything else but smile. So to my surprise we have a one-shot dedicated to everyone’s favorite Frenchmen; plus with Kieron Gillen writing it. Win, win right?

Well Gillen definitely tries to add more to the character then just leaping. Although there is a ton of that in this issue too. This one-shot is just giving us the mindset on Batroc and why he semi-respects Captain America but also wants to finally defend his honor by beating him. It’s a good take on the character and when he faces off against Bucky Cap he does get offended he isn’t fighting the original. While I think he gets the characterization down perfectly, the overall story itself is kinda boring. Gillen focuses more on humanizing Batroc then to tell an interesting story revolving him. He gets a call to help mercs knowning full well Cap will arrive, Bucky Cap does arrive and kicks everyone’s ass, and Batroc runs away. That’s about it and I was more interested in the look at Batroc’s mind then the fight that takes up the second half of the issue. If the issue was a total character peice and not half of it involving with a big fight then I would’ve liked it more.

I never heard of, or seen art by Renato Arlem and he does a serviceable job here. It’s not really groundbreaking but he certainly does a good job with Batroc’s leaping. As silly as that sounds, Arlem does do a good job with the fighting in this one-shot and when Batroc does make those magnificant leaps it’s really cool to look at. The character models on a whole though aren’t really interesting and those teenagers in the story look really bizarre with big chin lines. The coloring is a bit off for me too, because Nick Filardi seems to make all the colors muted to have a grim, gritty feel to it. But the story is anything but that and it’s not like Batroc is depressed at any point in the story. He seems to be happy with failure too so having the dark coloring doesn’t match the tone with the overall book.

On the whole I would recommend this one-shot, only if you really want more Batroc in your life. Gillen does a good job giving us an insight into the mind of Batroc, but the overall story is lacking in general. The art pretty much is the same with Arlem giving us some good action but the overall character models are pretty ugly and the muted colors don’t suit the issue either. It’s a shame that this one-shot couldn’t be better for such a ridiculous, but fan favorite character.