Let me begin at the beginning…which is to say, the cover. I really don’t like this cover.

Thankfully, Sami Basri’s still on the interiors, and the work is cleaner in this issue than last. This is a sleek book, Voodoo looks great, and there’s lots of cool shapeshifting action, too. Basri demonstrates an equal capability to render the battle armored Black Razor soldiers and the highly alien, organic Daemonites well.

I’m warmer to the story this month than last. I like Williamson’s writing, and the clone revelation is not as noxious as it could have been – turns out the “original”, it seems, is not an original Daemonite agent, so to speak, but rather the original Priscilla Kitaen, who has been modified by the Daemonites and given what appear to be all the powers Voodoo has. Perhaps she was uncooperative with them, because there’s clearly no love lost between her and the aliens. Still, I imagine that there was probably a simpler way to get a Hybrid agent than to hybridize a human and then clone her. Couldn’t they have (presumably) taken some of Kitaen’s DNA and used it to grow a hybrid without having to tamper with her and risk her turning against the would-be invaders? But I digress.

This is also an issue where VOODOO, GRIFTER, STORMWATCH, and SUPERMAN are on a collision course. I dropped GRIFTER and STORMWATCH some time ago, though I’ve kept up with SUPERMAN. You won’t necessarily miss things if you haven’t read those issues – the cogent points are mentioned in dialogue. Though VOODOO does do something that this month’s SUPERMAN is also guilty of: referencing events that will happen in a comic NEXT month. It’s just irritating (and problematic for new readers, I suspect) if a comic gets you interested in seeing things that are in the past for that comic, but have yet to happen in the series it references in the editor’s note – will VOODOO readers really think, “Gee, now I am definitely gonna wait around for SUPERMAN #7 to see that!” Maybe a few, but probably not as many as might try out the other comic if they could just go right now and pick it up.

I’m feeling better about the writer change now and I’m ready for VOODOO to keep going. Let’s see where it takes me.