After a solid first issue, Harbinger Wars #2 left me disappointed. It starts out good with a cool helicopter crash, and then heads downhill due to an influx of virtually unknown characters, poor pacing, a lack of originality, and poor execution. Coupled with average art, this comic just doesn’t have much going for it.

This issue reintroduces us to the newly-freed PRS psiots (humans with extraordinary abilities who have been raised in seclusion to be soldiers, but who are all no older than 20). There are some cool ones, with exciting, smart moments (like Monica Jim who can project herself as animals, but they are always cartoons because she’s never seen a real one because of her captivity), but there are just too many of them. Each one gets a box that lists age, name, and powers, and this just ruined the feel of the book. It felt like a 90’s comic, and I found it distracting, especially since there was a diagram in the cover explaining the characters. In addition there was at least one time that a psiot was called by the wrong name (the twin boy calls out “Maggie” when her sisters name is “Katherine”) so apparently I wasn’t the only one who found them hard to keep track of. With so many characters its hard to care about any of them.

Like issue 1, this installment is narrated through the dialogue of a conversation that takes place 9 days in the future. I wasn’t a fan of it in that issue, but thought it served its purpose, however in this issue it felt like more unnecessary explaining and threw the pacing off for what should have been an exciting fight between Bloodshot and Harada. That fight scene should have stood on its own with minimal play-by-play. This kind of storytelling is overused in this issue and unoriginal. I hope it doesn’t continue past the early part of next issue. It doesn’t work for me.

The artwork in this issue was good. Nothing stood out, nothing was horrible. Not much to say there.

Overall, it was a tiring read. Way too much explanation, and way too many characters to keep track of. It does a good job of keeping a new reader informed, but even for someone like myself who only reads Harbinger (but knows Bloodshot from his early Valiant years) it was overdone. There were some interesting ideas and powers that could have been expanded on, but weren’t, and then there were too many scenes showing us the psiots for what felt like little more than the sake of introduction. It felt rushed and crammed, and left me thinking that four issues is going to be too short to execute this story in an entertaining manner. The end scene that leads us into the reintroduction of HARD Corps was well done, and gives me hope for the rest of the series, but trepidation that they will be introducing yet more characters to an already crowded mini-series.