Last time I reviewed Agent X, it was a book coasting to ignominious cancellation and running a few fill-ins to occupy the remaining months.  Fortunately, the book's been taken off the endangered list for at least a few more months, to allow the original creative team to come back and end the storyline.  It's a heartwarming story of triumph over adversity, isn't it?  Sort of like a Spider-Girl for cynics.

Anyhow, that still leaves us in the middle of a rather odd run of fill-in stories.  This is the second half of Evan Dorkin's two-parter, which is actually a sequel to his 1993 one-shot Fight-Man.  To be honest, I'd completely forgotten about Fight-Man until a footnote in this issue reminded me.

Not that that really matters; it's a deliberately ludicrous exercise in over the top violence and absurdity, so worrying about the plot is really beside the point.  It really stands and falls on whether you share Dorkin's sense of humour.  Granted, this issue does hammer the same basic gag a bit too long - violent fighting against inane villains, with Agent X turning out to be even more vicious than Fight-Man - and it could do with a touch more variation.  But it's still funny, and penciller Juan Bobillo is clearly having enormous fun camping everything up.

And any book which includes a villain described as "the mutant yodelling human beatbox" has to be good.

Ultraviolent slapstick, of the sort which works just great in two issue doses.

Rating: A

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