The Legend of Luther Strode #1

written by Justin Jordan
art by Tradd Moore
colors by Felipe Sobreiro

Oh my!  Five years after the Greek tragedy that was The Strange Talent of Luther Strode imploded the titular protagonist's life, he's now an urban legend, a bogeyman to the criminal underworld, little more than an impossible rumor and a trail of mutilated bodies.  And his re-introduction is mythic.  His body is so Herculean that it's cumbersome, a massive weight on his inhumanly muscled shoulders.  His physique is hulking and his face shrouded by his thick, languorous hair, but it's his wall of driver's licenses taken off his victims that it truly chilling.  Maybe trophies, maybe reminders of his kills, either way their number and alarmingly methodical arrangement gives Strode's mission a bloodcurdling gravitas.

But Strode's vigilante activities haven't gone unnoticed, and with the rise of a young, Machiavellian heir to a criminal empire on the hunt for the rumor who keeps eliminating his henchmen, Strode finds himself in the cross-hairs.  Mike Hill has hired a tubby, heavily bearded man who calls himself Binder to confirm Strode's existence and then kill him, much to the displeasure of his (formerly his father's) right-hand man Duvall.  Binder strikes an ominous note, not only for his lethargic eyes and very robust figure but also the fact that he apparently approached Hill with his "expertise."  The surprise of the issue, quite unsurprisingly, comes on its final page: the return of Petra Dobrev.

Tradd Moore's suitability to Justin Jordan's story is increasingly apparent in this issue.  The Strange Talent of Luther Strode was always an elegantly stylized ballet of violence and gore, one that made Strode's actions all the more horrific for the beauty with which they were rendered, but his artwork here is exceptional.  Strode's physicality, from his heavy despondence alone in his grubby apartment to his mostly unseen fighting proficiency, is tense and the action sequences fantastically kinetic.