Task Force Z #9 - DC Comics

TASK FORCE Z No. 9, August 2022

Intriguingly depicting the titular characters as “public enemy number one”, Matthew Rosenberg’s script for Issue Nine of “Task Force Z” certainly contains a super-tense stand-off between Red Hood’s zombie-like goon squad and a heavily-gunned Gotham City Police Department. In fact, the sheer amount of officers stood outside the Snyder Ice Rink in Bludhaven arguably suggests that without Bane’s surprising distraction, Jason Todd’s team might not have survived the encounter intact; “Head for the Van! Copperhead, No! Don’t eat him… Good little monsters. Good job not eating the cop.”

Disappointingly though, the rest of this periodical’s twenty-two page long plot doesn’t debatably seem to lead anywhere until its very end, with the American author spending some significant time spotlighting the treacherous Mister Bloom’s investigations into Powers International’s deepest, darkest secrets. True, these incredibly dialogue-heavy scenes do eventually divulge that the “twisted meta-human” has established some sort of hold over King Snake’s Venom-enhanced, super-strong son using a covertly implanted brain chip, but such a revelation could probably have been told within a much shorter time-frame.

Instead, this book is padded out with Sundowner single-handedly almost taking out the entirety of Task Force Z, courtesy of an obvious ambush inside a pitch black recreation facility. So bloody a subsequent battle is undeniably pulse-pounding as Hanna Hobart’s alter-ego savagely slices her way through her former colleagues one-by-one. However, the villain’s eventual defeat and demise at the hands of Solomon Grundy is then solely used by Two Face as a means to obtain some more Lazarus Resin so as to resurrect the very undead criminals “their most dangerous foe” slaughtered during her attack in the first place. 

Significantly more convincing than this publication’s storyline is Eddy Barrows’ remarkable pencils, which go a long way to helping keep the reader fully invested in this book. The Brazilian artist proves particularly good when sketching Mister Bloom’s disconcertingly awkward mannerisms, so that even when the unnervingly masked menace is supposedly being friendly to the adolescent Derek Powers by ruffling the young boy’s hair, any perusing bibliophile will still feel that at any moment Commissioner Gordon’s arch-nemesis is going to cold-heartedly kill the kid.

The regular cover art of "TASK FORCE Z" #9 by Eddy Barrows, Eber Ferreira & Adriano Lucas