For the secret organization Project Rising Spirit everything has value and that includes the dead. They’re like scavengers, collecting corpses to meet their own ends. They are also the worst kind of dangerous entity. Whether it’s stealing children or experimenting on living subjects they don’t discriminate. Still with all its machinations they cannot control a dog. In issue 16 of ‘Bloodshot: Reborn’ Blood-dog will remind you of Max, the bionic dog or Krypto, Superman’s faithful companion. He’s the smartest one in the room and it takes someone intuitive like Bloodshot to listen.
This island with its combination of ‘Gilligan’s Island’ and ‘Groundhog Day’ is the worst of nightmares. Each day a team of bloodshots are once again test subjects for PRS’s newest annihilator. And like everything else in this comic it has a past, had a life and was a person. And Bloodshot’s main objective is to leave this place. Of course it will be violently with lots of bloodshed. Like the Eternal Warrior, Ray Garrison has no qualms in using brutal force to gain an advantage. In his own way he is also a tactician. What is realistic about this story arc is that you don’t know if the bloodshots are going to escape. Even if they do, would it be because the corporation allowed them to? Also, what would they be facing? Project Rising Spirit has their hands in nearly every cataclysmic event in the world. They created Generation Zero, children stolen from their parents to become killing machines. Who knows what they did to Blood-dog. This newest weapon goes beyond exploitation. However it may in Bloodshot’s eyes give him a chance at redemption. That’s where the grounding in reality comes into play, where there’s life, there’s hope. You get the feeling that innately Bloodshot gets that. Despite everything he’s been through, everyone he believes he has failed he still has hope, he hasn’t given up.
It seems that in all this hopefulness going on writer Jeff Lemire is unmoved and has plans of his own for Ray. As hopeful as Bloodshot may be he still fails those he tries to protect. The geomancer Kay is killed under his care and the woman that he cares for, Magic is most likely being experimented on by the corporation. If she’s lucky she may be dead, but it’s doubtful that she’s happy to be alive if she escaped capture. It’s another sense of realism in this comic. No one gets a happily ever after, they may not even get an after. Perhaps in that respect Ray Garrison is still his own man. He may not know who he is, but he does whatever he can, not to be controlled. He also takes responsibility for his own actions.
Whether it was because of what he had been programmed to do Bloodshot has never blamed others for the sake of deflecting. He may be truly honorable in that respect. After all Kay saw something in him, possibly his humanity. And that’s something worth fighting for.
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