This is a beautifully ugly book. McNiven’s art is delightfully cinematic, almost every panel in the issue is in widescreen letterbox format, and almost every panel holds something terrible to behold. This is Millar writing of course, so it feels somewhat redundant to say that most of the beats in this book are screwed-up and over-the-top, but they are definitely both of those things. There is much blood, many explosions, and both of these are produced in novel ways that will ultimately look wonderful in the inevitable summer blockbuster this book is turned into.

That’s not to say I have no gripes, though. I have one. I don’t personally have any problem with swearing in comics, but I don’t know that Millar writes expletives well. He writes fantastic dialogue generally, but a lot of his f-bombs feels shoe-horned in just to achieve a hard ‘R’ feel. The last page feels this way. The last line reads awkwardly to me, and takes a little bit away from the power of that last image.