Heroes for Hire #8 - Marvel (2007)

The first six issues of Heroes for Hire were excellent. Palmiotti and Gray took a bunch of cool, sexy characters and made them cooler and sexier. They also wrote fun stories with just the right balance of heavy and light. No, I take that back. There was no balance. It leaned way over to the light side and threw in just enough heaviness to keep the thing from flying apart.

They even worked the Civil War shenanigans into the mix and it didn't crap up the whole title. That's a major achievement right there.

Zeb Wells wrote issue 8 and it's not my cup of kickass. It's got all the elements I like: Misty Knight, Coleen Wing, Shang Chi, a Doombot, and best of all, The Headmen. Unfortunately, these elements were not assembled correctly. It's like Wells was handed a jet engine, four rocket launchers and a 74 Mustang convertible and he turned them into a refrigerator.

Palmiotti and Gray had built up a "Tarantino-meets-Giffen & DeMatteis" thing that I was loving. Issue 8 took things in a darker direction which was an enormous speedbump. The characters had an established chemistry and clear personalities which were pretty much discarded in order to fit them into this ending. All-in-all a disappointing wrap-up to what had been a fun story.

Oh, and I don't like the cover.