Street Fighter IV #3 Comic Review

Street fighter IV #3 is the third and before last issue of the Street Fighter IV miniseries that takes place at the same timeline as the ongoing breathtaking Street Fighter II tournament.

The story left of in the last issue with C.viper, the SIN double agent, was trying to kidnap Sakura and take her to seth who collects the best fighters around the world to use them as a test in his evil experiments. Even though she was helped by El fuerte and Dan, sakura was no match for the high tech assassin who succeeded in retrieving both Sakura and Dan who showed some satsui no Hado reading in the SIN computers. The same computers and machinery that made Akuma sense a disturbance in the Hado and set him on a trip to find the source of this Satsui No hado. Abel also makes an important appearance as he finally faces off against Seth who will reveal to him the answers the amnesic fighter was seeking for years.

The story is good but not great. While it had a great premise the Street Fighter IV mini series does suffer from the lack of the important characters that are busy squaring off at the SF2 tournament, an event that will make sure Ryu will not face Seth and chun-li will not fight viper. I really do think if SF4 was left until the conclusion of the sf2 tournament, just as in the game, it would have been better and would have been a solid mini series like Sf legends: chun-li that certainly surprised us all of how good it turned out to be. While I am still loving the SF4 miniseries I couldn’t help but sense the feeling of a tie in to the game rather than a story that has an impact on the Udon sf mythos.

As far as the art goes however, Joe Ng ROCKS. His art style feels like the second coming of Alvin lee (the brillian artist behind the sf II maxi series).

Don’t get me wrong, Street Fighter IV #3 is an enjoyable issue and offers an important answer in the Ryu/Bison interest, however the story feels a bit rushed and lacks the soul and depth the rest of SF comics have. But with Akuma fighting Seth in the final issue (as hinted by the ad at the end of the issue) thing might get a lot better when Street Fighter IV #4 hits the street in October.

Score: 7/10