About.com Rating

Introduction:

What good is an assassin without a bevy of weapons at his beck and call? For young Tyler Shainline, son of a world renowned master assassin, he is about to find out. Five Weapons introduces us to the school where each student is a target for the others to hone their skills on and when their latest celebrity student shows up without a weapon to his name, the school is turned upon its head and puts young Tyler in everybody’s cross hairs.

Vitals

Title: Five Weapons #1-2
Creator: Jimmie Robinson
Writer: Jimmie Robinson
Artist: Jimmie Robinson
Colors: Paul Little
Letters: Jimmie Robinson
Content: Five Weapons is for teen plus readers and contains violence and weapons.

Publisher: Image Comics (Shadowline)
Cost: $3.50

Story:

Tyler Shainline is the son of one of the most feared and deadly assassin families the world has ever known. Upon entering the school of Five Weapons, he is told that he must choose one of the five weapons schools to master which are the staves, guns, knives, archery, and exotic weaponry. Tyler however, chooses a different path, he chooses to use no weapon and thus puts him into a very dangerous game with the teachers, students, and principal of this school of death.
For Tyler, his only real weapon is his mind and he must use it at every turn in order to save his life and his secret from getting out. Not all is as it seems for Tyler and he must make allies and learn the secrets of his classmates in order to keep his secret hidden as well as keep himself alive. Can Tyler keep his secret and vow against weapons at the same time? Five Weapons seeks to find out.

Review:

Creator, writer, letterer, and illustrator Jimmie Robinson takes on a lot of hats with this mini-series, and does quite a good job overall with each of them.

The art is crisp and detailed with a lot of unique characters and personalities throughout. The writing is clever and showcases a mixture of a lot of genre’s of current comic elements such as kung-fu, comedy, manga, and high school angst.
Probably my favorite part of the comic was the over the top feel of it all. Each student’s uniform is a target, a symbol that they are next in line to fall from each other’s weapons. No one is safe in this school of expert killers and Tyler has to weave through the trenches and pitfalls set up not only by his classmates, but he faculty of the school as well. The comedy is well done and Robinson mixes a lot of concepts together well to create something new.

There were a couple of dialogue points that didn’t go over for me though, especially Tyler’s inner monologue about his close calls with his secret getting exposed. It just seemed a bit off as a whole and didn’t fit with the rest of the text.

So far, a lot has been revealed about Tyler’s secret mission and the school as a whole, so we have enough to keep us interested, but not so much that we will surely have some interesting reveals in further issues. I am excited to see what happens to Tyler and if he can pull it all off without picking up a weapon in the long run.

As stated before, the art was really quite nice. Robinson mixes a lot of ethnicity in the book with students from India, Jamaica, the Himalayas, and America. It was good to see such a diverse cast with each drawn according to their heritage. There was even a bit of playfulness in the art with Robinson using explosions, odd panel angles, outlines, and arrows to convey things happening. It worked well with the comedy of the situations and I enjoyed that.

Conclusion:

Five Weapons is off to a great start and could be a real gem this year if it maintains the qualities of the first two issues. I hope Robinson can pull it off for the rest of the series and look forward to what else we will learn in the upcoming comics and see if Tyler can use his weapon of choice, his mind, to outwit a bloodthirsty cast of classmates and teachers.