Super-powered operatives Cabbot Stone, Fourplay, Deadlock, Shogun and Tag have all fallen in the line of duty.  Project Born Again has found a way to resurrect them as part of a government assassination program. Born Again runs covert missions using dead men.  Defeat can mean death but never an escape.  Bloodstrike agents are condemned to eternal resurrection until their value is completely exhausted and the unseen power brokers order their charred bones cast aside for the next unfortunates.  Through a haze distorted memories and mounting contempt persisting into the next life, Bloodstrike won’t accept their rotten luck for much longer.

Much like his self-published series COPRA homages with John Ostrander’s Suicide Squad, Fiffe’s work on Brutalists has an undeniable and enviable passion for the project. He is enjoying himself immensely for this opportunity to contribute to this forgotten series with new stories. Bloodstirke originally ran between 1993 and 1995 as a spinoff book to the first ever Image Comics series Youngblood by Rob Liefeld. As with all early Image comics it is born out of some of the most popular Marvel Comics artists growing dissatisfied with just making their bosses rich to go build their own publisher and handle their own books. Youngblood as Liefeld’s vision of a high-profile team of government-sanctioned superheroes who enjoyed all the glitz and glamour that came with superstardom. Bloodstirke was the grittier and meaner spinoff book about the operatives hidden in the shadows and deprived of everything. Everything except the mission.

Following a few revivals earlier in the 2010s, Michel Fiffe began his solo efforts to write and draw a loving tribute to Liefeld’s absurdly named bootleg X-Men action figures. And showcasing his affection for the splashy and bizarre publishing habits that defines the early image comics in. See, Bloodstrike Classic lasted until 1995 with 22 issues but in 1994, as part of an initiative at Image Comics called “Images of Tomorrow”, they published Bloodstrike #25. Theoretically, teasing events in the future. With the book cancelled two issues shy of the timeline reaching this point, Fiffe fills in the gaps of every Bloodstrike collection by numbering his three-issue miniseries as issues #0, #23 and #24 (comic publishers loved having a flashback issue labeled issues #0 back then). While perfectly legible as a stand alone miniseries, Fiffe notes highlight easter eggs dotted throughout the adventure to previous storylines. Positively giddy that he alone gets to provide closure to unresolved Bloodstrike subplots that have seemingly haunted him since the 90s.

It’s the same enthusiasm one can imagine Alex Ross talking about Superman and it bleeds into the artwork as well. Fiffe draws unlike anyone in mainstream superhero comics. While some describe it as psychedelic, and his other work can certainly be abstract enough to qualify, Brutalists remains quite sober. He is working inside the restrictions of the genre by promoting clear panelling with his idiosyncratic style intact. Guns blaze with harsh flashes of white illuminate the black outlines of guns as every squeeze of the trigger causes a chiaroscuro flash of inverted colours. Fierce rivals spot each other across the battlefield, everything bleached white except their quarrel. Halftone dots on armour give it depth but also feel anachronistic, like this person should be living in a much earlier time and disconnected from their world. Laser blasts reduce flesh to charcoal as the rest of the body tumbles down in mute horror. The brief appearances from Youngblood render them with clean lines and vibrant colours. A contrast with the muted shading on the Black Ops team and highlighting neither of these teams can exist interact without looking out of place. Battles become line-art under a hazy of red bloodlust. With the thick outlines, paper texture and either water colours or pencils (I couldn’t tell) there’s a distinct DIY feeling into this whole book. Almost as if Fiffe is recreating drawings from the back of an old notebook used decades ago.

Baring his complete disinterest in the character Shogun, Fiffe manages to imbue his favourite kill team with effective tragedy by the end. Scoundrels who have lost their core identities become increasingly oblivious and apathetic towards regular civilians. Unknowingly destroying lives in grisly detail in order to succeed. Cabbot Stone has to pick the lesser of two evils, a group of hardened monsters he personal despises and the upper management who dispassionately control him. There’s a real sense that Fiffe spent a lot of time thinking about the militarised super-heroism and its black-ops associates as this exhaustive destruction of the soul. That these people’s goodness has been stripped out of them. Whatever moral capacity they had has been stripped away from them by the very mechanisms that expect them to service ‘the greater good’. The best they can hope for is an act of defiance against the unseen forces pushing them towards total self-destruction. But even in this state, even if it is pointless and motivated by spite, they can at least stick up for a co-worker. It’s the one sliver of heroism left for them.

Much like Hidiaki Anno’s Shin Godzilla and Shin Ultraman films, Bloodstrike: Brutalists by Michel Fiffe gives an infectious sense of nostalgia for something I never experienced. A way of appreciating arts and what it means to someone else that was so pleasant that it makes me interested in the original material. It’s a lean three issues with simple plots and as an outsider you will have to rely on Michel Fiffe’s post-script to fully appreciate the work. But he achieved the exact goal that he wanted to do: make 90s Image comics overseen by Rob Liefeld look extremely radical. I respect the effort enough that I might actually try old Bloodstirke someday. If you are in the market for a bit of nostalgia or just seeking out a superhero book fuelled by gruesome violence then try Bloodstrike: Brutalists.