EDITOR's NOTE: Mack Bolan: The Devil's Tools will be out in stores this April and is currently available for pre-order.

Mack Bolan is a character created by novelist Don Pendleton then serialized by the publisher and used in over five hundred novels since 1969. Marvel based The Punisher on Bolan whose moniker is the Executioner.

Like the Punisher, the Executioner’s biggest beef is with the mafia and both have a military background. Unlike the Punisher, Executioner is not as flashy, even in the comic book form he still does not sport oversized muscles or a costume with trademarked logos.

This issue establishes the character on a superficial level - shows what is going on, but doesn’t get into the motivations of Bolan. There are only two scenes that the book goes back and forth between. The first shown is a group of organized crime leaders - mafia, drug lords, smugglers, et al - who are meeting to talk about this guy that’s killing all their men, providing for a lot of the exposition. To break up the monotony of that scene they show Bolan as he raids a warehouse full of illegal weapons. Though Bolan has been around in books since ‘69 he still appears in books, so the comic remains up to date as far as the weapons, language, and technology goes - in one scene he downloads the phone book of the warehouse manager’s cell phone to a thumb drive.

It reads a lot like a prose novel. Wojtowicz who is a popular writer of the Bolan books is writing the comic format story as well. Because Bolan is trying to sneak into a warehouse in this issue, a lot of the panels are filled with narrative boxes. In this case, the narrative is coming from an all-knowing storyteller, with lines like, “The conspirators knew what to expect from the smell of singed hair and burnt clothing. But the sight of Nachez is still a slap in their face,” which tells what all the characters are thinking, rather then simply showing their reactions like a movie would.

Wojtowicz clearly knows what he’s talking about in regards to the weapons that are used. At several points it seems like he is trying to prove what he knows. During the big gun fight at the end, a box appears reading, “The Bullpup’s balance is all wrong to be a comfortable shooter and its trigger is a mushy, heavy mess to fight through for clean shots.” Though those details about the weapons don’t seem all that necessary to the story, I do find them interesting. At the end of the story are profiles of two guns used in the book.

There isn’t much in the first issue for readers to sink their teeth into. If this were a movie, these scenes would be run with the opening credits. The characters are introduced, but no insight is provided into them. Emotionally, it’s flat and just shows people fighting with no real humor, suspense, or crucial conversations.

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