Originally Published: April 6, 2011, on Comicvine.com

Misty Knight has awakened from her coma faced with confronting the Puppet Master and a mind-controller Punisher! Can Paladin and Iron Fist save her in time?

The Good

This issue features nearly everyone from the opening issues of the series as they all converge on Misty and this opening story arc comes to an end. This issue also ties up all the loose strings of the first four issues and establishes a larger problem at work behind the scenes pulling Puppet Master’s strings and paving the way for future issues.

The Bad

Not a lot of action takes place as The Punisher tries constantly to fight Puppet Master’s control, who himself is not really a man of action. Meanwhile, instead of jumping in and saving the day, Paladin and Iron Fist spend most of the issue arguing with each other over who cares for Misty more.

You then think business is about to pick up when Black Widow, Moon Knight, and Falcon show up, also mind controlled by Puppet Master, but this lasts for all of two pages before Misty breaks Puppet Master’s control on Punisher. Two pages of solid action compared to twenty pages of pointless dialogue is a bad balance. All of this culminates in Misty and Paladin looking to probably start Heroes for Hire again legitimately and to try to weed out whoever was behind this scheme to begin with.

The Verdict

Although a rather boring issue, it ties up all the loose ends of what was a great opening story arc up to this point. With Misty still feeling the effects of the drugs from Puppet Master and Paladin and Iron Fist barking at each other more than anything, there was just a lot of dialogue with very little actually going on. If you’ve picked up the first four issues, then pick this up to find out how things finally end up shaking out and then look forward to issue six when things will hopefully start to ramp up again after the action for this arc simply jumped off a cliff in this issue.