MEN OF WRATH #1-5

It's a little strange that this book flew under the radar (the final issue, #5, just came out last week). Writer Jason Aaron is pretty popular name in comics (he currently writes Thor, Star Wars, and Southern Bastards). Artist Ron Garney isn't a top name but he did work with Aaron on Wolverine. I guess you have to blame Marvel's Icon imprint, an extremely sorry, throwaway imprint if there ever was one. Maybe they didn't promote it enough? The only books published by Icon these days seem to be Bendis' books, Powers and The United States of Murder, Inc. The reason Icon was created was so Marvel writers/artists could publish their own books without going to another company like Image. It didn't fucking work! Jason Aaron's Southern Bastards is at Image. Hickman, Fraction, and Remender all have multiple Image books...so I'm not sure what the point of Icon is. Either way, Men of Wrath is good enough that it's too bad it got buried and forgotten so easily. It's not as good as Southern Bastards but it's certainly similar. The premise is basically there's this regular Joe who ends up in a heap of trouble. A group of evil dudes send a hit man to kill this regular Joe and the hit man happens to be...his father. Yep. Issue #1 and #5 are just okay, but towards the end of #2 and throughout #3 and #4 the book gets action packed and suspenseful and extremely wild. It's heavy on the violence, very brutal and very nihilistic. It's guys and guns and revenge. Typical, right? But Aaron is a king at this type of story. It's not a masterpiece or anything (Garney's artwork is a bit sloppier than usual) but good enough that it's a little sad it got lost in the shuffle. **1/2 (out of ****)