Review by Frank Plowright

Pulp hero the Avenger manifests in comics every now and then, and with Dynamite’s backlist packed with licenced characters, Richard Benson’s appearance was surely inevitable. He was an adventurer before a tragic accident that froze his skin grey, yet let him mould the flesh to resemble other people. Like his fellow pulp heroes he surrounds himself with a gang of operatives, collectively referred to as Justice Inc.

Mark Waid takes his lead from Benson’s pulp adventures, writing florid descriptive captions of Benson as a man of action dashing into danger during the days when the USA still hadn’t entered World War II. The opening case over four chapters involves a translucent man, peculiar chemicals and Nazis, with enough other distractions to endanger Benson and his allies many times over.

Ronilson Freire is a great action artist, having Benson burst from the pages in his functional dark gray jumpsuit and giving his allies personalities and in some cases far more dignity than their original incarnations. His evocation of the early 1940s is well researched down to the cars, and the locations are busy and well defined. All in all, you’d not want the Avenger looking any different.

There’s a hell of a pace to the opening adventure, and if anything the second moves even faster in dealing with traitors, the blackmailed and wartime saboteurs. Christopher Sequeira co-writes as Benson finds himself hampered by the authorities and having to work alone in tracking down an elusive enemy in Sleeperman. Such is the pace, it reads as if a story plotted to be longer, then cut down to two chapters.

Combining detective work, action and personality, this incarnation of Justice Inc. is a winner.