By: Charles Soule (writer), Renzo Podesta (art), Shawn Depasquale (letters) & Jade Dodge (editor)
The Story: 27 comes to a very strong close. Will it just continue the freaky-good story about numbers or does it have something to say?
What’s Good: I LOVE reading a creator-owned comic that ends strongly. The joy of reading lots of creator-owned comics is getting exposed to all the weird and whacky ideas out there, but the agony is that you realize how difficult endings are. This isn’t a problem with X-Men; they avoid this problem by simply never ending the story. Most stories that have a strong hook simply don’t end all that well. That’s just life….
So, I was incredibly tickled to see 27 smoothly shift gears from all the fun with numbers, weird demons manifesting through dead pigeons and naked mad scientists sacrificing cats in warehouses (which was AWESOME) to really having something to say and doing so in a way that makes you revisit concepts from earlier in the series. As it turns out, once you smear all the funky stuff away, 27 is really a comic story about genius and how one obtains genius. Is it the product of fate? Is it pushing a button? Does everyone have an allocated quota of genius within them? Is genius earned via hard work? That’s kinda what this series is about. It’s just stellar storytelling because you can tell that Soule had this “genius” theme for his story, and all the other stuff is just trappings that he hung on the story to make it more fun. Love that!
There have been stories about this topic of “nature vs. nurture “before, but where 27 really excels is by spinning Soule’s concept of genius in a way that isn’t preachy. This is especially true during a VERY strong ending sequence. Bravo guys!
The art is mostly outstanding in this issue too. There are a few places where it looks a little odd (the crying kid’s eyes), but the overall brilliance of the storytelling abilities of the art really overshadow any shortcomings on that front. Again, nowhere is this more true than in the last scene that builds to a perfectly time emotional climax.
And, I don’t even like bands and guitars. 🙂
It is also worth giving these guys some credit for getting this comic out on time. I don’t know if they had the whole thing already completed or if they just stuck to a schedule, but the effect is great because the mysteries in this series worked very well for serialized story telling. There are so many comics that have promise, but fumble away their momentum. I generally do subscribe to the theory that great art can’t be rushed, but the fact is that you DO lose momentum with these delays and Soule and Podesta didn’t let that happen to them.
What’s Not So Good: Nothing. This was a great ending to a very strong series. Probably worth a re-read when I have time.
Conclusion: A rare thing: A great ending to a fun series! If you didn’t catch this in single issues, make sure to catch the collected edition. This is one of the early leaders for “best mini series of 2011”.
Grade: A
-Dean Stell
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