By John Mahoney and Filip Sablick (writers), Thomas Nachlik (art), Troy Peteri (letters)
The Story: His name is Alec King, born into a life of crime, violence and betrayal on the streets of Philadelphia, in the state of Pennsylvania. And he cannot die.
What’s Good: Thomas Nachlik’s dark, rough and sketchy art continues to be one of the highlights of this series for me. Although the story and characters are plenty engaging on their own, the book would be a lot poorer without this art to sell the gritty, noir-ish nature of the story. Not only does it look fantastic, it helps establish the dark urban environments and lends a strong sense of place and reality to what is, after all, ultimately a fantastical story. Although Image Comics uses thicker, high-quality glossy paper for many of their book, it serves this art style particularly well, as the extra glossiness emphasizes and highlights the contrast in the stark black and white images.
The story itself remains very strong, as we learn more about the (more and more tragic) figure of Alec King and his doomed friendship with Brian. The character growth feels organic and natural as the story progresses (despite the fact that it’s not told in a totally linear fashion), although now that the major ‘hook’ of Alec being immortal has been established, it will be hard for the series to top that moment of drama and revelation.
What’s Not So Good: Although the story and characters are well told, I can’t help but feel that this book is trying to be two things at once: a crime drama about a small time hood down on his luck, and a tragic fantasy about a man who finds he can’t die despite wishing to do so. I have a feeling that this disconnect is more a function of the place we are in the story than any actual storytelling problems, but I do hope that the two seemingly disparate parts of this narrative will come together more neatly in issue #3.
Conclusion: While not quite the wonderful surprise that issue #1 was (mostly because we now know what to expect), this is still a very strong issue and well worth a look. If it continues at this level, Last Mortal will be on my shortlist for best miniseries of the year come December.
Grade: A-
-SoldierHawk
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Grade
Conclusion