Shark Infested Waters: The Legend of Luther Strode #3 Review

Editor’s Note: Did you know a young boy drowned the year before those two others were killed? The editors weren’t paying any attention… They were making spoilers while that young boy drowned.

Justin Jordan needs to stop, take a breath, and be very, very careful from here on out. Don’t worry, I will explain.

If 2011’s The Strange Talent of Luther Strode was inspired by a 1980 horror movie, then its sequel, The Legend of Luther Strode, is clearly shaping up to be at least somewhat inspired by a 1980s sequel to a horror movie: Aliens. I say this in the sense that, where Alien was a moody, claustrophobic story about an unstoppable monster picking people off one by one, Aliens instead was a big damn action movie that used the trappings of the original movie, like facehuggers, soldier aliens and acid blood, as a plot device to allow people to blow a bunch of shit the fuck up.

And for most of the first three issues of The Legend of Luther Strode, writer Justin Jordan has delivered a very similar experience. He has taken the details set up in the original series – superhuman strength and speed, the ability to see and foretell the physical effects of pending violence, and being pretty much all but bulletproof – and used them to set up not only big action setpieces of Luther stomping the crap out of gangs of criminals who are a motion tracker and a “Game over, man!” away from being Colonial Marine cannon fodder, but long battle sequences between Luther and similarly-powered Binder. Throw in Luther’s friend Petra – a regular woman with a surfeit of cojones running around this superpowered mayhem with just a gun – and Jordan even has his Ripley, albeit in a supporting role. All we’re missing is the damn ship’s cat and Lance Hendriksen… and based on his current filmography, he’d probably show up if Jordan asked nicely and offered a hot meal.

But if this latest Luther Strode series is, in fact, Aliens, then there must be an alien queen. And in The Legend of Luther Strode #3, we meet a contender – I say “contender” because halfway through the series is a little early to be really meeting the final Big Bad – and this contender is… shall we say, problematic. Problematic in the sense that his identity is such a bold move that it can really only elicit one of two responses.

Those responses being either, “Wow!”, or “…are you fucking kidding me?

Normally this is the part of a review where I summarize the plot, but there isn’t that much to summarize here. There is a huge battle between Luther and Binder, where Binder reveals that he is an agent of those who created The Method to bring to heel those who use it publicly. Luther prevails – barely – and Binder takes Petra hostage and takes her back to crime boss Mikey Hill’s mansion, hoping to lure Luther there to confront Binder’s secret weapon: another user of The Method that Binder has chained up in a safe.

That’s pretty much it, as plot goes… but plot or not, the strength of this issue is in the action, with which it is packed. From the first page to more than halfway through, we have nearly wall-to-wall action (with the exception of one page of Binder spewing exposition about who he is and what his motives are), and it is a testament to artist Tradd Moore as to how fluid and well-choreographed it is. We have panel after panels of two superpowered goons throwing each other around a building, out windows and around the landscape, and not only is it exciting and bloody in a cartoony way, but it is simple to follow, and each move makes sense within the space shown. The battle features interesting uses of throwing knives – if The Method dictates that me mind controls the body, how can you disconnect the two without a bone saw? Binder has an interesting method! – and the use of a busted tooth as a weapon that would make Bullseye weep in envy. So when it comes to violent excitement, this issue delivers.

And then there’s Petra, who, if she actually existed, would already have taken a restraining order out against me. Petra serves a ton of purposes in this story, particularly if we’re going with the theory that Jordan had Aliens in mind while writing this story. She is Ripley, in that she is running around with these monsters with just a gun and determination. She is Hudson (at least Hudson before the aliens attack for the first time), in that she has all the best sarcastic lines in the book (the line, “For you, big guy? Anything. Except Anal,” is almost worth the cover price). She is Newt, in that she is the bait that will make Luther walk into the belly of the beast. The only downside is that the one person she isn’t is the reader, at least not in the sense that Ripley was at the start of Aliens. By which I mean that, at the start of that movie, Ripley was the only one saying what all the viewers were thinking: don’t go in there. It took a lot for her to move away from the role of audience surrogate to action hero, whereas Petra simply starts there. It’s no dealbreaker by any stretch, but you just need to take on faith that something in between the first series and this one made her completely at ease with bulletproof people who move faster than you can see, and use both those skills to rip out spines.

But then there is the equivalent of Aliens‘s queen… which, depending on what Jordan has in mind for the coming issues, has the potential to be the biggest misstep he has made in this saga so far. I won’t mince words, even though it means a spoiler, but the act two Big Bad is Jack The Ripper. Supposedly Jack is a devotee of The Method, and was captured and bound by Binder (Binder! Get it?) in a safe for, well, God knows how long. And on one level, this is fine; using Jack The Ripper as an antagonist in a genre story is as old as The Lodger, which is literally one hundred years old… although that should demonstrate the risks of using Jack as a surprise antagonist: it ain’t exactly a new or fresh idea.

But the other problem comes when you know the least bit about the real Jack The Ripper: the guy worked in stealth, and employed generally surgical precision to excise particular organs – precision to the point that at least one of his victims, upon discovery, was initially thought to be just unconscious. That doesn’t exactly jibe with the methods shown by the devotees of The Method we’ve seen so far in Luther Strode, which can only be described as “surgical precision” if your primary care physician prescribes the removal of your spine with a chainfall winch.

So the reveal of Jack as a superpowered, immortal killer has some basis in genre fiction, and depending on your ability to suspend disbelief (and, again, how Jordan uses the character in future issues), really has the potential to go sideways here. If Jordan can somehow justify that Jack The Ripper had the ability to perform the extreme violence that every other character we’ve seen so far in Luther Strode can perform, and yet he only used it in limited ways, this thing might work… and now that I think about it, if Jordan can tie these powers in as the cause of the terrible mutilation that Ripper victim Mary Kelly suffered (go ahead: Google “Ripper Mary Kelly Crime Scene Photo” if you want to be sickened), I can probably buy into the use of the guy. But honestly? My initial reaction upon seeing The Ripper was, “You’ve gotta be kidding me!”

If you are looking for a violent, exciting comic battle with interesting characters, some damn fine sarcastic and threatening dialogue from Petra, and nearly non-stop superpowered action, you’re not gonna do a lot better than The Legend of Luther Strode #3 this week. But be aware that Justin Jordan is playing with fire here. The reveal of Jack The Ripper will either thrill you as a not toward history and the introduction of a villain who will be utterly willing to turn Petra into chopmeat if Luther fails to stop him… or it will make you say, “Jack The Ripper? Really? What, does Brian Michael Bendis have the comics copyright on the Cleveland Torso Murderer? Or better yet, why not invent a serial killer instead of resorting to cultural shorthand to amp up the danger to Petra?”

But either way, I will be back next month for issue #4… if only to see if Luther shouts, “Get away from her, you son of a bitch!” and proves my whole Aliens theory.