Review: X-O Manowar Vol. 2- Enter Ninjak

Quick Summary

Pros: The story is a dramatic improvement over the first volume. It is both extremely interesting and exciting in a way that leaves one wanting much more.

Cons: The main character can be hard to like sometimes, however I suspect this may be intentional.

Overall: The book is even better than the first book promised. It starts with a story of adventure and conspiracy that will satisfy anyone’s cravings for both raw action and intellectual stimuli. Overall it is an amazing book and makes a good case for this being one of the better series out there.

Story

In our review of X-O Manowar Vol. 1- By the Sword, I talked about how I hoped that all the setup and introduction that was done would end up paying off in Volume 2. To put it briefly, it absolutely did. All of the buildup that was present now pays off as this volume presents a true start to the thrilling journey this series is about to undertake. Honestly I would say that this volume serves as a true starting point for the series, with the first volume serving more as an origin story or #0 issue. Overall, this was a great story and a great collection that hopefully will continue to make a truly great series.

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This book manages to capitalize on everything that the first book set up for it, specifically the intrigue. The first collection did a good job in presenting a lot of really interesting story ideas for the future, this book tells those stories while also setting up for more. It specifically does a great job at worldbuilding. It introduces concepts like a shared mindscape for the Vine, more details on how infiltrated the world is, and information about why the Vine do what they do. All of these were extremely interesting to learn about but there is still the ever present feeling that the surface of these concepts has barely been scratched. Meaning that there is still a lot out there to be excited about. This book does exactly what it planned to do, tell a great story that gets the reader even more excited for whatever is coming next.

Ninjak makes an appearance in this book in a roll that serves well to both introduce his character and add to the overall story. He represents a unique foil to Aric as he is a futuristic master of stealth and subtlety while Aric is an ancient relic of brute force and savagery. He almost appears to be the Batman to Aric’s Superman as their encounter drew back many memories of World’s Finest teamups. Overall his character was an interesting one to behold in this story, especially to see his interactions with Aric, so hopefully we will be seeing more of him soon.

The only real problem is that we did not get to learn much more about Aric. He received some dialogue and character development but most of the spotlight ended up being on the complex shadow war he ended up joining. Being the title character, I would love to learn more about him outside of the very basic traits we have learned already. However, this is also a very minor problem to include. Usually this would not even be worth talking about but the collection was so good otherwise there is not much else in terms of problems to even talk about.

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Art

The art has not really changed much from the last volume yet the tone matches the art a lot better in this volume. In the prior volume, the story was a lot darker and focused on war, enslavement, and general despair. While this volume places a lot more focus on just interactions between people and places. This makes the lighter art style a much better fit for the story they are telling. Personally, I would have loved it if they could have gotten a different artist to create the scenes from the past while retaining this artist for scenes set in the present. Overall, however the art in this volume, while still being somewhat average, manages to work a lot better here than it did before.

Continuity

So far, this series does not make any connections to any other works in the Valiant Universe. It does continue the story started in X-O Manowar Vol. 1: By the Sword (Review) and will continue the story in X-O Manowar Vol. 3: Planet Death.

The character Ninjak is an old character from the prior Valiant Universe who makes his first appearance in this Valiant Universe here. However, he does not have any stories prior to this and his appearances are sporadic until his more regular appearances in Unity and his own comic Ninjak.