Complain all you want, people, but Youngblood isn’t going anywhere. Let’s face it, we are a medium that thrives on nostalgia, a fan base that loves the phrase “there are no bad characters, only bad writers.” Cancel one book, and five others will take its place, although I suppose the opposite holds true for Rob Liefeld’s creations--which, strangely enough, might be my main complaint with Youngblood Volume 1: Focus Tested.

As I’m sure my legion of readers have figured out by now, I’m a big fan of Joe Casey’s work. I pretty much give anything he’s doing a shot. Plus, with this volume of Youngblood, Image has gone with the current trend in collected editions--selling the first volume for only ten bucks, a few dollars less than buying the single issues would cost. So Youngblood Volume 1: Focus Tested was hard to resist.

There’s not a lot that’s new in this current version of the team--and Shaft, our POV character, asserts as much during the course of this first arc. We’re introduced to a new lineup (heavily influenced by Alan Moore’s run, considering how few issue he did and how many of his creations made the cut), and we have a new scenario. The heroes won’t just work for the government, they’ll also be reality TV stars. It’s basically the next logical step in the evolution of Youngblood, which means it’s also a pretty obvious step.

What’s missing from this story is Casey’s take on the characters. The further into the story I got, the more I wanted to see Casey bring in some of the more infamous characters that Liefeld created. I appreciate that this is a book staying true to the core concept, but I’d love to see it get a bit more radical. That said, I think we get some good set up for such a transition in future issues.

What clearly has changed from the original series is the art. Derec Conovan does great work here and his redesign of Diehard is suitably creepy. His work has a fairly heavy line and his characters are very distinct, which makes it a shame that he wasn’t given the cover duties for this collection. However, I can understand why they’d allow the creator of Youngblood at least that much.

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