Review of "Mage: The Hero Defined, #2" by Image comics

 Review of

Mage: The Hero Defined, #2 by Image comics

Four out of five stars

Lightbat as a weapon, obnoxious hero

 This issue has three people with powers in an unlikely and unusual alliance. It opens with two of them casing an abandoned building where a captive is being held. At this point a loud, obnoxious man comes up to them and says he is “Kirby Hero, rhymes with zero.” Instead of doing the, “What are we going to do?” opening statement, Kirby punches a hole in a barrel, fills it with large rocks and tosses it through a window.

 Once the barrel is through the window, Kirby follows it, forcing the other two to follow him. Three very large birds with razor sharp talons are in the building and they must be defeated before they can do any major damage to flesh. One of the original two has a weapon that can only be described as a light sabre, with sabre replaced by a baseball bat. The other is a mender, a person that can heal wounds by a simple touch.

 It turns out that Kirby is a modern equivalent of Hercules. For bad behavior, his father has given him a set of twelve major tasks that he must accomplish. There is also some kind of magician that is an enemy of the three with powers. He employs a gang of surfer types that ride on hoverboards and talk in chopped monosyllables. For example, when the magician summons the head of the surfer gang he walks up and says, “Yo, da, you rang?”

 While a recent phenomena in the comic world, the loud, obnoxious hero character is one that is good if not overplayed. In this case, the Kirby Hero character is not, although he comes close to the edge on more than one occasion. When this story ends with a mild cliffhanger with a pointer to future action, the reader is left with the desire to read the next installment.