Task Force Z #1 - DC Comics

TASK FORCE Z No. 1, December 2021

Chock-a-block with some of Batman’s most feared opponents and an unhealthy dose of brain-devouring zombies, Matthew Rosenberg’s script for Issue One of “Task Force Z” probably landed reasonably well with its 65,700 readers in October 2021. For whilst the ‘Elseworlds’ narrative set some time after A-Day arguably lags a little during its second act, as Jason Todd spends his time sedentarily walking throughout the convoluted corridors of the mysterious Chop Shop facility talking to different people, “Death’s Door” still contains plenty of action and intrigue with which to beguile its readers; “Has our director Crispin been keeping secrets from us..?”

Foremost of these hooks is debatably this comic’s high octane opening concerning the arrest of Crazy Quilt by “Gotham’s last hope”, and Paul Dekker’s subsequent terrifying interrogation by a ravenously hungry Arkham Knight. The classic “D-List bad guy” actually proves himself to be something of a fighter initially, when he punches a “foot-wide hole” through Man-Bat during his unsuccessful escape attempt across the night skyline of Bruce Wayne’s home metropolis. But soon then resorts to his more familiar ‘timid’ self when his captors chain him in a bare room and cold-heartedly introduce a slow-moving, cowl-wearing zombie into his highly vulnerable environment.

Likewise, this book’s ending is similarly as surprising, courtesy of Red Hood’s undead team stumbling upon a heist by Mister Freeze, as opposed to the low-level smuggling operation their employer’s intelligence suggested they’d encounter. The American author does an especially fine job of penning the sheer chaos surrounding Todd when his unprepared people try to tackle one of the Caped Crusader’s most notorious super-villains, and ends the seemingly fatal encounter with a seriously dramatic cliff-hanger…

Eddy Barrows should also be given plenty of credit for making “The One Where Crazy Quilt Almost Gets Eaten” such a treat for the eyes. The Brazilian artist genuinely appears to try almost every trick in the ‘panel layout book’ to generate some sort of momentum with Jason’s series of conversational pieces. However, the illustrator particularly produces the pulse-pounding goods during Task Force Z’s titanic tussle against Doctor Victor Fries, with various characters getting shockingly smashed into tiny pieces of frozen flesh.

The regular cover art of "TASK FORCE Z" #1 by Eddy Barrows, Eber Ferreira & Adriano Lucas