Ninjak #20

Written by: Matt Kindt
Art by Khari Evans and Andres Guinaldo
Published by Valiant Comics

What a bizarre issue we got here. The main story here takes place in the future.....and the present as well. So the issue opens with Ninjak and Gilad, the Eternal Warrior, many years in the future, in the last issue they had just confronted their mutual enemy from the old Unity days, Dr. Silk. Silk's latest plan is to use Dead Side Intelligence Mechanism to achieve his goal of living forever. So Silk and his "Brobdingnagian Archnid" as the Eternal Warrior called it, or as Ninjak called it "Giant Magic Spider" head to the Dead Side, and of course Ninjak and Gilad follow Dr. Silk into the Dead Side. Then we get mystical character Punk Mambo showing up seen only by Ninjak. This is where the story turned around for me. Up to this point where I wasn't too happy with the tone or direction of this story arc, but we got a tie to the end of the last arc finally. Ninjak has a Dead Side disease and in the past(and the backup feature) he is in a meditative coma, but somehow the disease is effective at all points in Ninjak's timeline, so if I understand this correctly, future Ninjak is going to cure himself via Punk Mambo in the past. Time travel is weird.

This story arc has been my least favorite of this series so far, which sucks because this is one of my favorite comics I read each month. This issue was an improvement of the last two as I enjoyed it much more than those previous. I loved the way the backup converged with the main story. We have Punk Mambo in the present along with Neville Alcott(Ninjak's Mi5 handler) and Livewire(his Unity teammate) are with Ninjak in the backup feature, and Alcott used Mambo to try to get through to Ninjak. It was interesting and I'm glad we got back to the current day stuff. As much as I enjoy the sliding timeline we get with the Valiant books, it can be cumbersome sometimes.

Khari Evans' art was good in this issue. It didn't wow me, but didn't offend me either. As I've said I'm just not a big fan of him in this series, but it wasn't a distraction. I also liked Andres Guinaldo's art in the backup, good stuff.

We can expect big things from Ninjak next year, with the youtube series starting and it looks like we will be getting a confrontation with Master Darque who hasn't been seen since the Book of Death series so there are exciting things coming up for our favorite British Ninja. A good issue, after a lackluster couple of issues.