M.O.D.O.K. Assassin #s 1 & 2
Writer: Christopher Yost
Pencils: Amilcar Pinna
Inks: Amilcar Pinna, Terry Pallot & Ed Tadeo
Colors: Rachelle Rosenberg
Letters: Virtual Calligraphy’s Travis Lanham
Cover artists: David Lafuente (regular)/Gabriel Hernandez Walta & Christian Wars (variants)
Editor: Daniel Ketchum
Publisher: Marvel Entertainment
Price: $3.99 US each

My latest perusal of a deep-discount bundle from my local comic shop takes us back again to the 2015 “Secret Wars” event, in which Marvel offered up a litany of alt-reality worlds and interpretations of its characters. M.O.D.O.K., thanks to his unusual and striking design, is a popular Marvel villain among many fans, so it didn’t come as a huge surprise that one of these limited series might focus on him. I really wasn’t expecting much from these two comics; after all, comics spotlighting villains can be a challenge, as the reader rarely has someone for whom s/he can cheer. But writer Christopher Yost, best known for his animation scripts but no stranger to comics, delivers a wonderfully fun concept that makes the most of the temporary, anything-can-happen premise of the patchwork Battleworld that serves as the backdrop for all of these “Secret Wars” spinoff titles. The bargain bundle that contained these comics only included the first two issues of the run. I was surprised to find there are three more episodes to the title (the story seems like a four-partner would have been plenty), but I’ll be keeping an eye out for those other chapters, given how entertaining the first was.