A reboot can be a double edged sword. There have been a bevy of brilliant attempts to bring characters back from the brink, but there have been just as many failed attempts at catching lightning in a bottle, as they say. Sometimes things are just meant to be left alone. It’s a sad fact of our ever changing society, that not everything can make the jump to a more modern audience. Sometimes it is merely how the property is handled that is the problem, and sometimes the property itself has aged like a fine milk. All of that being said, I can honestly endorse, with all of my heart the new Bloodshot Reborn series from Valiant Comics. This series from Mico Suayan and Jeff Lemire is fresh and brilliant for anyone who wants to get into Valiant or the character. This is no reboot though, while the title lends itself to the idea that it is, it is more of a jumping on point. The title is no misnomer though, there is a reason for the rebirth, but we will get to that in a moment. Before I say anything more, I think if you want to fully enjoy this series to the peak of its potential, go and read The Valiant by Paolo Rivera, Jeff Lemire, and Matt Kindt. I actually reviewed that earlier this year and you can read that review here.
Now we encroach upon spoiler territory. I will now put an obligatory “Spoilers” sign, just in case you weren’t actually reading and were just skimming through the article, as is customary. If you are interested in the non-spoilery bits, skip ahead to the second giant sign marking the end of the part you don’t want to read. Make sure not to read above that sign though.
SPOILERS
Okay, now I can only hope that you didn’t read past the giant sign. I am beginning the spoilers now. You have been warned.
As I said before, this series is presented as almost a sequel to The Valiant, a series that helped to establish Valiant’s new line of titles written and drawn by some of the most talented new voices in the business. At the end of The Valiant, we see the then current Geomancer, Kay, remove the nanites that control Bloodshot’s body, turning him back into a mortal man. Bloodshot Reborn takes place a few months later. We find our hero, Ray Garrison, wasting away what new life he has found. He has the details of his life in a folder he is too petrified to open and he has been working for a motel in exchange for a place to stay, and enough money to buy booze and pills.
This is where the story begins, and from this point Lemire has a veritable pantheon of places to go. He paints a character distraught with his past, choosing to climb into a bottle and melt away. A character you would have never expected had just had his life handed back to him. These dark and depressing moments are a side of Lemire that he has always been able to capture with a strange dreary enamor, with his run on Animal Man and his original graphic novel Underwater Welder. This story is different though, this depression is intense. It’s full of self harm and hatred. It’s visceral. That’s when Garrison starts seeing things. Particularly two 
people, if you can call them that. The first is a cartoonishly silly and violent caricature of Bloodshot called Bloodsquirt who likens himself as a sidekick to Bloodshot, because everyone needs a sidekick. The second is Kay, the woman who died giving Bloodshot his chance at being human again. The woman who Garrison still has feelings for.
Garrison tries to explain these things away. An effect of the booze and the pills, but it isn’t that simple. Shortly after Bloodsquirt and Kay begin plaguing him, a massacre happens by the hands of a man with white skin and a red circle on his chest, the physical markings of Bloodshot. Garrison comes to the conclusion that the nanites are still out there, and it is his responsibility to take care of them. It doesn’t take long for Garrison to find this white skinned man and take him out. When he does so, his body absorbs the nanites that were manifesting in the rednecks body.
When, shortly after absorbing the nanites, another man shows up in the news, having yet again gone on a rampage with the same skin affliction, Garrison is left with a moral dilemma. He can stay the man he is, open his file and learn who Ray Garrison really is, or will he give into the voices in his head, and accept that he will always be Bloodshot, that that is the only identity that ever really mattered.
This darkness fuels his change. As he defeats the secondary doppelganger, and absorbs his nanites. He comes to terms with this fate that has been dealt to him, but he will not become the man he was before. He will not become the same Bloodshot. He will be reborn, see what I did there. In the final issue of the arc, we are taken into the whimsically violent and absurd world of the Squirtverse, as Bloodsquirt attempts to heal his comrade. The arc ends with Garrison reinventing himself and trying to make peace with who he is.
Spoilers over
This series is brooding, something that I feel can only come from a character like this. Something that is both refreshing and familiar. Lemire’s capturing of this character’s battle with himself, both emotionally and physically, is like watching an addict try to reform themselves. It’s full of hope, albeit distant and wanting. Lemire has a way of capturing men at their worst, and it is a soul crushingly beautiful ability.
All of this though, wouldn’t have been possible without the painstaking work of Mico Sauyan. I mean literally, this wouldn’t be a comic book without him. All joking aside, the interior artwork for this comic is some of the most gripping, realistic artwork that I have seen in a comic book for a long time. Each page is filled top to bottom with some of the most intricate, gorgeous artwork to grace a comic book, and it makes the whole comic book experience all the more visceral because of the style that Sauyan brings to this story. I honestly think that this first arc wouldn’t be nearly as intense without Sauyan at the helm. Lemire also pops in with his strangely ethereal artwork, as he pencils the character Bloodsquirt in the first four issues. It paints a weird juxtoposition in the book, as it should, between that character and the rest of Sauyan’s brilliant world. Raul Allen also does guest pencils for the final issue of the arc, where they travel to Bloodsquirt’s universe. His colorful, whimsical pencils make this whole issue a crazy beautiful trip through another strange dimension. Definitely an interesting step away from Mico’s ultra realism, but one that doesn’t feel awkward, and definitely one that doesn’t go unwanted.
The tl;dr for you tech savvy folks goes like this; This comic is phenomenal. In just the first arc, this comic book has shot to the top of my pull list. This is most definitely a cannot miss comic book, especially if you are looking to broaden your comic book horizons, which is almost certainly something everyone should be doing. Pick up the issues at your local comic shop or pick up the trade for Bloodshot Reborn Volume 1: Colorado on September 24th
