Review: Youngblood #71

I guess the first thing we should be asking ourselves is this really worth the time and effort to invest in again.  The honest answer is yes.  First time readers will be able to follow things nicely without having to worry about the teams history.  Readers who remember the team from the Nineties will enjoy revisiting this team which helped make comics history once upon a time.  What makes this worth you’re time, well for starters John McLaughlin is having a good time writing this.
 

Using tongue in cheek humor and poking fun at the books past for starters was a good way to endear him to me anyway.  Also the direction he has put in front of us is one I’d like to see if he can accomplish.  Can a reporter looking for a chance at redemption change the public’s opinion of Youngblood?  Does she even want to is the real question.  We’ll find out as the story progresses.  Still as Ms. Cook is reading about the team she does place them in between the Kardashians and Snooki in the scale of cultural importance which I found pretty genius.
 
If this issue is any indication however John has his work cut out for himself as well.  By using corporate sponsor ads while the team is doing there thing is heavily annoying and a gimmick he should watch if he doesn’t want to alienate some of his readers.  The Honey Cougar (badger) youtube reference while funny seemed somewhat out of place to me so let’s hope those moments don’t continue.
 
While Shaft has been replaced by what the other teammates refer to as Shaft-lite we do see Terrill as an FBI agent so the prospect of his return or at least a story dealing with why he left is still possible.  This leads me into the characterization this issue and believe me you there was plenty of that going on.  One characters over stimulated libido seems very cliché to me and unappealing while another characters was fun to see in the situation it arose.  Regardless of that all the characters got a moment to shine and set the stage for how we’ll see them progress from here on out. Also the last page answers one question about a missing teammate while setting things up for the next issue
 
The art was another finer point of the book.  I’m going to go out on a limb and say Rob is inking the work here.  While the art itself is crisper and more detailed than what we normally see from him you can tell his hand was involved because it still has his feel to it.  Let me iterate this as well as I can, THAT IS A GOOD TH ING. 
 
If this series continues to the way this issues shows then it could very well be the best of Liefeld’s original series returns.  There is unlimited potential here and so far I’m excited to see how this creative team is going to go about changing our opinions on this books new cultural status.