In the world of comics today subtlety does not seem to be its strong suit. The final page of yet again another Captain America reboot has this huge reveal, but what do you do for the rest of the series? Where are you supposed to take an iconic character who’s practically wrapped from head to toe in the American flag? Instead of writing yourself into a corner or using revisionist history why not use the rich past of the character instead. Valiant’s Bloodshot is a survivor. He’s the one constant in this universe.
Still, that constant is mostly companioned with pain. And through it all his character has never changed. Ghostly white with that red circle always protruding from his solar plexus Bloodshot doesn’t need a rewrite of his former life. That’s because he may still be reliving all of them at once.
After battling the Shadowmen and the goo alongside Ninjak, in an action packed twelfth issue that will have you holding your breath, Bloodshot finally finds out about the man in the tower during the thirteenth. On the journey Jeff Lemire puts our hero in an emotional torture device that makes a pain amplifier seem pleasurable. “The Analog Man†run has been the best of a what if the version of the old Marvel comics series without having to pretend or do away with nearly thirty years of storytelling. Lemire utilizes the many incarnations of Bloodshot to make your heart break. He’s still a man who has no memory of who he is. We don’t quite know if he was created in a test tube or an actual human being who has his mind constantly wiped clean by the regeneration technique of the nanites in his blood, or the corporation that implanted both memories and Bloodshot’s hardware. Then there is the uncanny resemblance to Rai and his mission to eradicate psiots; which may soon see him in the path of the Eternal Warrior.
In essence this arc has made Bloodshot the lynch pin in the Valiant universe.
His constant search for who he is and why at one point in his history he was programmed to kill Toyo Harada, could be a driving force in the new 4001 series. After all, who is Father? Is he an evolutionary form of Harada? Is Bloodshot still around on the old earth? At some point is Livewire also an implant of his memories? She does make an essential appearance in issue 13 that leads to the seed of yet another potential narrative.
Subtitling this issue “The Analog Man†only makes Bloodshot more important to this comic book world. In an age where telepaths rule and tech is king, only a man who is the very essence of anti-technology may have the answers for saving the world. If only he could save his sanity the way he solves all his problems – with violent aggression and lots of gunfire, then perhaps he could find some semblance of closure. But then again where’s the fun in that?
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