By: Mark Waid (writer), Diege Barrreto (art), Andrew Dalhouse (colors), Ed Dukeshire (letters)

The Story: The good guys get cracking with a plan to take down the Plutonian once and for all.

What’s Good: Yes!  We have a “normal” issue of Irredeemable back!  What do I mean by that?  Well after two months of releasing issues (Irredeemable Special #1 and Irredeemable #13) that were more tailored to allowing new readers to have a jumping-on point, we finally get back to moving this story along.  Honestly, I was a little worried that Irredeemable had lost its fastball, but Waid is really bringing it in this issue.

Almost all of the major plot points move along here:  The Paradigm bust out of jail.  Gilgamos (who is really old, btw) and Bette both get over their angst and start to act.  Orian the Hunter is in on the action.  And, nasty/angry Plutonian is BACK (along with his mysterious sidekick).  I will be very excited to see how all of this shakes out next issue because Waid has really set this up nicely.

We also get a few of the classic little reveals that this series is so good at.  Here’s a non-spoiler example:  When we first saw Orian the Hunter (around issue 6) it was obvious that he was summoned from another dimension and that you need some “lucky” volunteer to serve as his vessel to move into this world.  It was obviously bad because the guy who drew the short straw was none too happy, but a lot of the details about how Orian was summoned were vague.  We get to see the details here and it’s probably about like I expected it to be, but cooler.  This series really tends to pay off its little mysteries and it seems like Waid has this pretty well scripted out.

The art is pretty solid.  This is never a book that I call out as “best art in the industry,” but I don’t think it has ever had a noticeably weak issue and it never misses ship dates. I’ll take that.

What’s Not So Good: If you’ve followed the saga of Bette and the stolen wax from the magic candle that causes Plutonian to lose his powers (gosh that sounds lame, doesn’t it?) you knew that eventually we’d see this candle wax again, but why would they make a bullet out of it?  I don’t know…..why not just make a little candle?  We know that works and you only have to get the candle into the same general area as Plutonian.  Wax bullets are used if you don’t want to break the skin and it is also pretty easy to miss (like when the target is basically Superman and can fly).

Conclusion: Irredeemable is back in a big way.

Grade: A-

– Dean Stell



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Conclusion