Villains for Hire #3

Headshots by writers Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning and artist Renato Arlem continues their Heroes for Hire book with the titular Heroes for Hire now mostly being a pack of mercenaries and villains in Villains for Hire.

I'm mostly picking up this book because it has/had potential to touch upon the same ideas, themes and golddust as one of my favorite books Thunderbolts. We even get a few ex-Thunderbolts cast members in this book like Paladin, Scourge, Shocker, and Speed Demon. On top of that, the rest of the cast are mostly villains who would likewise slot fairly well into a Thunderbolts enviroment. But sadly, this miniseries has been rather uneven and the last two issues of Villains for Hire were more vignettes than a plot... but this might be because the series was downgraded at least twice from the intended 6 issues (to 4!), this shows a lot but this issue has definitely been the best of the ones released so far.

This issue sees a big war between the two factions of mercenaries: in one corner we have Misty Knight's Heroes for Hire (Crossfire, Lady Stilt-Man, Man-Ape, Speed Demon) and in the other Purple Man's "Villains for Hire" (Avalanche, Bushmaster, Deathstalker, Monster, Scourge, Shocker - and now the Heroes for Hire defectors Bombshell and Tiger Shark). For 22 pages, it can't quite pack every character into the book - for example characters like Monster or Speed Demon get sidelined very quickly.

Despite the mismanagement of the cast, the book still manages to give us some good moments; the highlight of the issue probably being the sequence where virtually all of the "Heroes" defect after a big battle royale. That is all of them except... Crossfire?! In a surprising twist, Crossfire stands by Misty Knight, which proved as a stand-out character moment for the otherwise maligned Hawkeye foe - but as is the way with most of Abnett and Lanning's books, Crossfire's character piece was just to punctuate the immediate death of the character when he is almost instantly shot by Scourge for not defecting. The sudden death and sort of tragedy of it at least made it a bit less of the same old Abnett and Lanning death that has plagued most of their work.

Heroes for Hire was an average book, it's only really saving grace being the prominent role by Paladin and the promise of recurring roles for Black Cat and Silver Sable. The book was axed before they became mainstays and this is very much the wrap-up series. This is a enjoyable enough Thunderbolts-esque series but it is fraught with pacing problems. With that said, this issue is far and away the best issue of the Villains for Hire miniseries and probably the entirity of the preceding Heroes for Hire book.