The book starts out with our anti-heroine falling into a machine and thrust forward into 2013 from 1943.  Jumping forward seventy years out of your time and comfort zone must be a little jarring to say the least.  As the book moves along, she eventually learns that she must stop the man called Harmon before he takes over all of time for the Nazi Reich, or at least from 1943 onwards.  The problem is that she cannot stop jumping around through time herself, and trying to stay in one place is a hard enough chore.  She finds herself during different points during her life, some from before the original jump, some afterwards and much of it during 2013 and a little beyond as well.  She also seems to be reliving things repeatedly from previous jumps.  As she jumps, we get to learn more of her past and origin, and just who the mysterious man in green, a German named Schauburger, and what his intentions and role in the game is.  But like most of her life, things end in tragedy by book’s end.

To start off, Rob Williams who has written some pretty good and enjoyable books in the past for Marvel and other publishers has really knocked it out of the park with this comic.  Instead of making Miss Fury a hero, she is now an anti-hero, akin more to Catwoman than the Punisher, but still one that would rather do things for her than for others.  We get to see Marla Drake’s earliest days with her unapproving father and her admonition of being a ‘cutter’.  That was a really intriguing bit of characterization and one that does not come to mind in any other superhero origin story to this day.  It really lays down the groundwork for her emotional state of mind as she grows up to be the person she is, her motivations and even her strength of individuality.  When Marla’s father sends her on a trip to Kenya we see her acquire her powers through a potion and the inheriting of a magical black-leopard skin.  And that is when we see the Miss Fury we are introduced to in the story, one that is selfish in some respects, but one that is private and only trusts when given a reason to do so.

This book, which is almost non-stop action from the first issue to the last, has done the remarkable by telling a complete origin tale with very little breaks to the main plot.  The pace does break obviously when Fury does a jump into her own timeline, yet Williams does such a great job of setting up the measure of the book that it is hardly noticeable.  A true feat to Williams’s talent to be able to do so and to do it so expertly, keeping the interest of the reader intact along the way.  Making Marla Drake/Miss Fury a tragic figure instead of a mass produced good guy was also a novel approach and it worked perfectly.  She is by far, more fascinating than many of the female characters published by the Big Two at the moment and she only has a handful of issues to her name.  The simple fact that we can connect to her so quickly and feel for her tribulations is the best thing about this title.  To be able to do so for any fictional character is an exemplification of a book’s quality, one that this book does quite easily.

There are always two parts to a successful comic though, and Williams’s partner in crime is Jack Herbert.  Having previously done work on a few different Dynamite properties, namely Red Sonja and the Shadow to name a couple, his pencils have never looked so polished or refined.  Whether it was just a natural evolution or some form of inspiration from either script or character, Herbert has taken his artwork up a level.  Marla Drake is beautiful, really beautiful under his pen and when in costume is sleek and ferocious.  It is nice to see as well that Herbert’s backgrounds are just as smooth as his character work.  Cars, transports, motorbikes, buildings and more are drawn just as well as anything else in the book, and with a great level of detail which just pulls you into it.  If there was ever an artist to poach from the little guy, Marvel and DC need to look at Jack Herbert.

While the book did end on a bit of a downturn, it keeps you wanting more, which is what every good story should do.  From the first issue to the last, we get immersed in not just the action and the current situation, but we get transported into Fury’s world, we learn about the woman herself and her personal demons.  It is a look into a newly revamped character brought back from the golden age and into the present from Dynamite, Rob Williams and Jack Herbert, and it is a welcome one.  The only negative is the wait until the release of the second trade paperback or the next issue, should you be buying it monthly.

5 out of 5