Point Blank is the latest book in DC's "Eye of the Storm" range, featuring mature readers versions of the WildStorm books.  This one is actually a five-issue mini featuring Grifter from WildCATS, and guest starring Lynch from Gen13.  Given the audience that they're going for, however, it's easy to see why they're making a clean beak with an unrelated name.

As with StormWatch: Team Achilles, I'm a little unclear why this was deemed to require a mature readers label.  It's certainly aimed at the older end of the market, but by the same token it's not drastically different in tone from a lot of the Marvel Universe books.

The superhero elements are considerably downplayed in this story, not that they were ever all that prominent with either of these characters to begin with.  It's really more of a spy story with a couple of superhuman powers thrown in, but the blend seems to work.  If anything, though, it does seem a little out of place to have caped superheroes wandering around in the background.

The story has Lynch enlisting Grifter to help him tie up some loose ends from his previous career in International Operations.  Since Lynch doesn't actually explain what these are, and the story is from Grifter's perspective, most of the mystery centres on what the hell is going on.  I'd have preferred to see a little more in the way of clues in the first issue, but the tension builds well enough.

Artist Colin Wilson plays the story largely as a real-world action story, and the spandex heroes look jarringly out of place as a result.  But when they're out of the way, the style works nicely, and brings the cast's personalities across.

Perhaps a little slow as a first issue, and it'd be better off dumping the conventional superheroes altogether.  But on the whole, quite good.

Rating: B

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