Let’s address the elephant in the room… or the Tazmanian Rhino in the room. A good chunk of this issue recycled from abandoned Youngblood projects from the past twenty years. I count at least 8 pages I’ve seen in preview art from Rob. The most recent of which is the opening three pages where Roman faces the Diehard bots from the 2017 Youngblood series. This was intended for the Blood Wars mini that was scrapped in 2018 or 2019. The later two sequences were part of aborted Youngblood projects and dome around the same time as Bloodsport. The first works effectively as part of the Diehard rescue subplot and the later feels forced in as we are expect to go with the idea that Shaft and Badrock go on a safari adventure while the rest of their teammates are facing off an aloen invasion from the keep. Also no mention of Lord Chapel, Tyrax and the other villains we saw congregate in issue #4. I suspect this issue was cobbled together to help get the book on track and while it has some fun stuff going on it kills the momentum of the previous four issues. The final few pages do bring everything back together where we see a new Youngblood team assembled featuring Cougar, Photon, Combat, Sundance, Extreme Warrior, Prophet, Big Brother, and Doc Rocket along with the Re: Gex making their Image Comics debut.
Overall an okay issue with a few cool moments. We shall see what Rob does with issue #100.
The ACROBats bit at the end is fun. Rob writes a goofy little song as we see these ugly little critters tear through people. Seth Damoose as some nice black and white textures to “mangaify” Rob’s work. I wouldn’t mind more back ups like this in Youngblood. It served Savage Dragon well over the years.