Preview – Ninjak #1

Matt Kindt mania continues at Valiant as they prepare to roll out Ninjak #1 on March 11th! He’s been all over the Valiant Universe for the last year or so, most notably in Unity, but everyone’s favorite freelance assassin is finally getting his own book. According to Valiant, the book is going to be 40 pages every month, all by Kindt, split into two stories. The lead story, drawn by Clay Mann, will follow the current exploits of Colin King, while a backup story drawn by Butch Guice will chronicle his past as an inexperienced MI-6 trainee. The whole thing will be tied together by the hunt for Webnet, the SPECTRE-esque organization led by Dr. Silk. (Yes, the same Dr. Silk from Rai and the World-War II flashbacks in Unity. Dude is old.) Tied in with that is the hunt for the Shadow Seven, a group of Shinobi masters with links to Ninjak’s past.

Given Valiant’s occasional hat-tip to the old-school art styles of its progenitor, I was kind of hoping to see a nod of the Mucha-inspired style that Joe Quesada brought to the original Ninjak. It doesn’t have that, but it does have a strong suggestion that Colin King became a ninja due to a love of Zatoichi, and that’s pretty perfect. Not to mention that an insane Russian agent with incendiary hair is a fantastic statement about what to expect from this book in the future.

Ninjak hits shelves March 11th, with variant covers from Lewis LaRosa (Bloodshot), Clay Mann(X-Men), Dave Johnson (100 Bullets), and Marguerite Sauvage (Sensation Comics).