By Nick Couture — Good vibes. Bright colors. Hangin’ with the buds. This feels like No One Left to Fight at its core. It’s a pleasant romp through a gorgeous world heavily inspired by Saturday morning cartoons and anime. No One Left to Fight #2 smartly allows the relationships and dialog to take center stage as we learn more about Vale and the complex relationships with his friends.

No One Left to Fight is a gorgeous book top to bottom. Artist Fico Ossio perfectly commands each scene, giving each moment the right amount of exaggerated martial arts cartoon flare. Fico utilizes the strengths of the comic book form to propel us through the story. That being said, I can easily see this crossing over into a different type of media. A cartoon or video game in this world feels like a natural fit. Fico is also accompanied by Taylor Esposito on letters, who does a fine job capturing the high octane pacing this story requires.

Writer Aubrey Sitterson, meanwhile, feels like a breath of fresh air in comics. I love his approach to this comic. Introducing the reader to a new world can be a daunting task. Often in fantasy-oriented books you’ll see huge exposition dumps that explain all the factions of the world and races and creatures. All of that is great and works for a lot of stories. What Sitterson does, though, is focus on the characters and their relationships. Getting me invested in that first has me way more interested in the larger world. It’s really smart writing given how many new comics we see each month and how many fall to the wayside because of oversaturation. Sitterson has introduced me to this world fluidly—now I really want to peek around each corner and see every detail.

The great film directors the Coen Brothers have described directing as “tone management.” I think that sentiment can be applied when making comics. Sitterson and the whole team involved manage the tone of No One Left to Fight so well. Everything down to the recap page where a catman named Billy Von Katz shreds on a guitar just feels like it fits perfectly. No One Left to Fight #2 ends with a perfectly silly cliffhanger, which will probably be immediately tossed aside much like the cliffhanger from the first issue, but nonetheless it shows how this book understands what it is. It’s having fun with genre tropes.

Overall: I feel good when I read this book. It makes me nostalgic for things I grew up loving. Is it the deepest, most intense comic ever? Not really, but that’s cool. I’m invested in the characters and want to learn about the gorgeous world. I’m usually not this person, I love a good contained story, but this is only a 4-issue mini and I can’t help but wish we were getting more. 8.0/10

No One Left to Fight #2
Writer: Aubrey Sitterson
Artist: Fico Ossio
Letterer: Taylor Esposito
Publisher: Dark Horse
Price: $3.99

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Nick Couture is a video producer living in Lansing, Michigan with his wife and daughter. His first love is film but comics have been a constant source of creative fuel for him for many years. He loves drinking coffee and long-distance running.