The Legend of Luther Strode #6

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

I'm not entirely sure how you can sneak up on someone with a chainsaw, especially when that someone has superhuman hearing, but Petra's dismantling of a distracted Jack is greatly satisfying.  Luther Strode might be the titular hero, but The Legend of Luther Strode belongs to Petra.  It's her story, and the series is at its best when she's in the middle of it.  Strode and Jack's super-duel is entertaining but not nearly as lively as Luther's flirtation with Petra and her fiery bravado in taking down Jack and rescuing his hostages despite being physically over-matched.  She may seem glib—"Once again, there anyone fucking here?!  I swear I am not a mutilating mummified psychopath!  Usually." (The Legend of Luther Strode #6: 15)—but she's the human heart at the center of the horror.  Her visceral reaction to the bloodbath, even if perpetrated by Jack, is welcome recognition of the inhumanity that's become part of Luther's life.  And for it, Luther is a better man when she's around.

Jack, on the other hand, is a reminder of Luther's world, the one he's stumbled into and found difficult to escape.  Cain, the first murderer and founder of Luther's bloody discipline, has many followers, a brotherhood of powerful, blood-thirsty men.  I assume, mostly men, though a woman would be an intimidating twist.  For most of the mini-series' concluding issue, it seems that tracking down the rest of this grisly coterie would be Luther and Petra's final task, but then they find themselves standing outside a mass murder, covered in blood, and confronted by a legion of police.

The Legend of Luther Strode #6 isn't the series' finest visual offering, but it's a beautifully gory end to the tale.  Tradd Moore's two-page splash—and I do mean "splash"—of Jack's massacre in the shopping mall (2-3) is powerfully reminiscent of a bloody, morbid Where's Waldo seek-and-find:  dead and mutilated bodies decorating the fountains and food court, sculptures of limp and impaled corpses, and such a chaotic glut of carnage that making out the details is part of the perverse fun.

The Legend of Luther Strode #5

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

If Justin Jordan and Tradd Moore were to create a sweeping love story, it would look a lot like The Legend of Luther Strode #5.  After the events of The Strange Talent of Luther Strode, Luther spiraled out, believing the Librarian when he insisted that Luther and the others were made killers by the inevitable force of destiny or fate.  Believing this, and hating himself because of it, Luther channeled that rage and his murderous impulses against those he thought most deserved it.  And so, his wall of drivers' licenses was begun.  The reappearance of Petra in his life sparks something of his old feelings.

Petra sees something different in Luther.  She actually sees Luther.  Despite his repeated and fervent pleading that she leave, run away from the danger and himself, Petra stays.  When she confronts Luther about her resolve not to abandon him, Luther seems finally able to accept an alternate view of himself absent the bleak determinism preached to him by the Librarian and Binder.  In short, he recovers his humanity.  Their kiss, after he discards his mask and his blood-thirsty vigilante alter-ego, is suitably epic, an impassioned homage to classic Hollywood romance, a dramatic two-page spread with the lovers surrounded by yellow flames.

Jack, on the other hand, presents a more troubling problem.  Seizing the opportunity offered by Mr. Duvall's improvised bomb to kill Binder, Jack then escapes, abandoning Petra and Luther in the flames, to wreak a greater havoc on an unsuspecting public.  In a move that admittedly breaks the psychological pattern of the furtive serial killer, Jack enters Abberline Mall—a shopping center coincidentally named for the famous Chief Inspector of the London Metropolitan Police tasked with investigating the Ripper murders in Whitechapel—with a grin that anticipates mass murder and widespread chaos.  It falls to Luther and Petra to find and stop him.

The Legend of Luther Strode #4

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

Jack is a connoisseur.  His style is acrobatic, flexible, and as sharp as his knives.  In contrast, Luther is dramatically blunt, relying on his raw strength and physical resilience, and for this issue at least, he matches Jack as they trade blows, but is unable to defeat him, even in the verbal sparring.  Especially in the verbal sparring.  Quite honestly, Luther should probably stop talking during fights altogether.  For Jack, conversation is the flavor to the fight.

"It is a blasphemy, I know, but I've always thought that was a shortcoming of the book... that it does nothing to instill a sense of aesthetics in students.  After all, what is life...   ...without beauty?"  (The Legend of Luther Strode #4: 5)

Apparently Jack is also an aesthete of the Pater variety, suitable to his late-19th-century era if not perhaps to Whitechapel.  Binder is a more faithful and orthodox disciple.  A believer.

During Jack and Luther's long and athletic brawl, Mike Hill's been a gruesome decorative fixture hanging from the balcony and matching the drapes, even in the first few panels, but he draws more attention later when Duvall returns home to find the young man strung up and disemboweled.  He and Petra once again find themselves unexpectedly on the same side, though the side may have changed.  After a quite delicate and knowingly resigned exchange between them, he quite helpfully directs her to the gun room.  Petra's beaming elation at the sight of the well-stocked armory is easily the issue's most delightful moment, but it's the unmasking of Luther by Binder and Jack that is its most surprising, a small mark of real defeat and a sign of his vulnerability.  As such, Petra—newly armed with a Cagney-style tommy gun and a collection of side arms—is poised, if precariously with Jack looming above her, to save Luther again.

The Legend of Luther Strode #3

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

There were inklings in The Strange Talent of Luther Strode that his very talent was something old and sinister, rumors from the librarian of Cain, the first murderer, and Strode's own uncontrollable murderous instincts.  But Binder, he's just the man to give a short history lesson in carnage.  There was once a time—by the look of it somewhere vaguely ancient Greece, or Near East perhaps—when one's will over body and desire to command that strength were unchecked, because there was no real threat to it.  As ordinary man's technological capabilities to kill improved—sometime around the invention of gunpowder for muskets—the vulnerabilities of those earlier men became more significant, and their individual physical might was no longer safe to go uncurbed.  Cain, the first of these warriors, for reasons that seem more ritualistic than practical, had himself bound as a model for others to restrain themselves.  Those who could not or would not—and one in particular, Jack the Ripper, whom we see in flashback—were given for Binder to capture.

And we finally find out what that ominously pointy key hanging around Binder's neck for the last two issues opens:  the safe of Jack the Ripper.  And suddenly Hill's kevlar vest seems woefully insufficient.  Jack's time wrapped in his box has turned his face—what little we see of it—into little more than a leathery mummy.  His physique, like his personality, is sharper and subtler than Strode's.  He moves with liquid precision, his limbs long and angular, knives his weapon of choice.  Strode is all meat, thick and muscular, and fond of hand-to-hand combat.  It's an entirely unexpected direction for Jordan to take, and one that on its surface sounds highly implausible even within the world he has created, but, against all odds, the incorporation of a Victorian serial killer into a 21st-century violence fable kind of works.  Jack's not the power-hungry warmongers of earlier periods, he's an old-fashioned sadist, one unlikely to tame his appetites for practical reasons and thereby end up imprisoned in a box.

Petra, Jack's new ginger delicacy, is perhaps Strode's soft spot, a point Binder is more than happy to make repeatedly, but Jordan and his protagonist both see her as much more than Strode's enemies.  She is more than just her relationship with Luther, something more than a pawn in his game.  Her improvised help with Binder while Strode remained partially paralyzed with his nerve toxin elicited an honest and sweet "Thank you" from Luther.  He just might be a man who deserves her.

BONUS POINTS:  Bar none, The Legend of Luther Strode has the finest back matter of any series I think I've ever read.  Yale Stewart brings us the ongoing saga of Jack the Stripper, a strange but funny twist on a sinister character.  Kate Leth gives a monthly lesson in murder, this time 16th-century Hungarian Countess Erszébeth Bathory, the most prolific and famous female serial killer of all time, responsible (as Leth investigates) for between 80 and 650 deaths of young women.  Further illustrations by Felipe Cunha, Matthew Warlick, Patricio Betteo, and Ricardo Venancio, but the finest of the fine is Jorge Coelho's back cover:  "Luther Strode's Legendary Breakfast," because even a super-killer needs his morning coffee.

The Legend of Luther Strode #2

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

It's been five years since the events of The Strange Talent of Luther Strode, and Petra Dobrev has changed.  Well, she's more liberally pierced with some enviable arm tattoos, but to have believed that she would willingly kill Luther as punishment for his actions seemed foolish.  I'm delighted that my suspicions about her are vindicated so early.  Her reunion with Luther is, like his re-introduction in the previous issue, spectacularly subtle.  Doing workouts in his grubby apartment—he's likely squatting—that would shame Luke Skywalker, the gradual close-up on Luther's slight, upside-down smirk as he realizes Petra's just outside is a pleasant surprise.  Petra's breaking-and-entering skills are as epic as one could have hoped, full of combat boots, Taco Bell calorie-guilt, very little grace, and cosmetics.  Her startled response, when he sneaks up behind her and astutely inquires, "Come to kill me?":  "Fucking Fuckmonkeys!"  Her advice:  "Put a bell around your neck for Christsake" (The Legend of Luther Strode #2: 4).  Petra, I've missed you.

Unfortunately, their conversation is cut short by another of Hill's assaults by mercenary thugs, these considerably more professional than his last.  What follows is another of Jordan and Moore's long, cinematic action sequences.  This one has two subplots:  Petra's attempts to escape the melee and Binder's attempts to tranquilize a preoccupied Strode from a building opposite the street.  To Binder's surprise, Strode proves astoundingly able to maintain his awareness and focus in the midst of even a fully armed attack.  To Petra's chagrin, after successfully head-butting and disarming one of the mercenaries who had her cornered, she finds herself again with a gun to her back.  This time, Binder.

With Petra as a hostage, Binder is able to negotiate a tête-à-tête with Strode.  Binder's precise agenda remains entirely opaque, especially since having been hired by Hill to kill Strode, his use of tranquilizers and his proposal to "end this peacefully," even "relatively speaking," would seem to confuse his given task.  But after Strode blinds him by slashing the old man's eyes with his fingers, at least part of the truth is revealed:  Binder, like Strode and the librarian from The Strange Talent of Luther Strode, is able to control his body by his will and mind.  He regrows his eyes and meets Strode's punch full-on.

This issue has, if possible, more action panels than the previous.  They serve some remarkable narrative purposes, and characters—particularly Petra—benefit considerably from their ebbs and flows, but Tradd Moore's art style makes some panels considerably more appealing than others.  Those that exploit streaking colors and blurred backgrounds to convey speed are invariably less visually interesting than more "static" images.  Luther Strode's body, when still and unmoved but poised to attack, seethes with potential energy, like a rubber band being tightly stretched.  The explosive implications of these moments are far more kinetic than those in which he streaks around the frames.

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.