By: Jeff Lemire (story & art), Jose Villarrubia (colors), Carlos M. Mangual (letters), Gregory Lockard (assistant editor) & Mark Doyle (editor)
The Story: The final battle begins as the bad guys arrive in Alaska.
Review (with minor SPOILERS): By the end of the issue, Lemire has maneuvered things back to a familiar dynamic: Gus/Sweet Tooth is in peril and Jepperd/The-Big-Man must come to his rescue. We’ve seen that scenario a few times in this series and it always works. It gives the story a very Taken sensibility where Jepperd plays the bad-ass that totally fits his character. As he’s said a few times, the only reason Jepperd is still alive in this apocalyptic setting is that he’s shown a talent for killing people. Furthermore, the presence of Jepperd’s actual son means that he might have to make a choice between his true son and Gus. Surely Lemire wouldn’t do something THAT evil, right?
The events that carry us through the issue are pretty garden variety even if they are action-packed as Jepperd and his hockey-buddy try to cover the escape of the women and children. The scenes are all well-done, but I’m not sure there were any surprises therein. It was all about maneuvering pieces around for next issue.
The negative aspect of this issue is that it is now crystal clear what this series won’t be giving us. We only have two more issues left, so we won’t be getting much more explanation of the plague or the post-apocalyptic society that has sprung up. I’ve enjoyed this series a great deal, but it is disappointing that we won’t get any more of that “big picture” stuff. Basically, the plague is left as vague as a “military weapons project that went horribly wrong.” We’ve seen tantalizing bits of settlements in the wastelands, but I doubt we’ll learn any more. This is a series about the relationship between Gus and Jepperd and if you demand a larger view you’re likely to be disappointed.
The whole issue looks good from a visual standpoint. Lemire goes with a couple of very non-standard page layouts in this issue. A lot of credit should go to whoever placed the narration boxes and word balloons because otherwise you would never be able to read these pages properly. Even if these pages were a little strange, it does the heart good to see Lemire experimenting and his page of the guy lighting the bombs was great: the guy lights a fuse and then the flame of the fuse tracks around the panel borders to the next page where it goes BOOM! Other than that, the drawings of this “last stand” work really well with Lemire’s strengths. It’s sad when the Jepperd and his old buddy (who have only recently been reacquainted) realize that one of them needs to die to cover the other. Lemire nails this kind of stuff.
Conclusion: An effective issue, but it did leave me a little sad for material that the series clearly will not be addressing given that it ends in two issues.
Grade: B
– Dean Stell
Grade
Conclusion