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BULLSEYE: GREATEST HITS-A REVIEW
Anyone who follows comics, or who has even seen a certain comic book inspired movie, knows Bullseye is the most deadly assassin in the Marvel Universe. Hey-ask Matt Murdock. Ask Karen Page. Ask Elektra. But beyond being a psychopathic killer for hire, there isn’t much we know about him.Until now.
Writer Daniel Way and artist Steve Dillon have combined their talents on the five issue mini series BULLSEYE: GREATEST HITS and managed to weave a well crafted, well written tale set both in the past and the present.
The story begins with NSA agents Baldry and Hoskins visiting a secret underground NSA facility where the lunatic assassin is being held after a rampage off the coast of Alaska which resulted in some missing nukes. Through flashback, we learn Bullseye’s real name is Leonard and he grew up in Queens where he, his brother Nate and his mother were subject to constant beatings by his father. Nate plans to end the problem but, in the process, his mother dies and Nate and his father end up dying in a fire which consumes their apartment.
Leonard ends up with a foster family and eventually makes his way into major league baseball. Being psychotic surely has its’ disadvantages and he literally takes a man’s head off in a game one day. That stunt gets him out of baseball and into a job with the CIA, where his first assignment put him in Nicaragua where he eventually became known as a drug kingpin named Paolo; creating interest from drug lords everywhere and one vigilante named Frank Castle. During a severely violent firefight with the Punisher, he gets busted by the D.E.A. and eventually ends up working for the NSA and then the kingpin, who hired him to take out Daredevil. Instead, the former CIA Op once known as Leonard offs Elektra.
Actually, he wasn’t working for the Kingpin. He was working for the NSA all along...just led everyone to believe otherwise. In fact Bullseye reveals that everything he has told the agents was a lie to keep him from being bored. The fact that he supposedly has a tumor is a lie. Where he hid the plutonium missing from those nukes is a lie. Everything is a lie-except he still is the most dangerous man on the planet, which he proves by killing one of the NSA agents with a tooth he spits out.(REALLY!). It turns out that Nate is really Lester and the youthful Leonard set the fire. But his dad escaped because of his NSA training and...guess what? he’s still alive in the NSA facility. What happens next is a race to survive before the more dangerous man to ever work for the government can get free.
While the series does prove that the truth may or may not be out there, it’s a fun romp. I’ve always been a huge fan of Dillon’s art and always reminds me of how much I loved his stint with Garth Ennis on PREACHER. And Way’s story is filled with a macabre sense of humor and is just well written fun, which is what comics used to be about.
Don’t be surprised if Marvel takes any success from this mini-series and turns it into a regular series, which would be a shame unless they could keep the high quality of this series. Either way, this is a great jumping on point for readers of the genre.