Manipulative.
In this final issue, we finally peel back to see the
mastermind of this entire piece, and how things go right and wrong for each of
our characters.
Barbiere does manage to get into Ray Willis’s skin and make
him more complex than your average protagonist. There are shades of his
character here that seem both to reflect the gray nature of the conflict and
his own personality contrasts.
Victor Santos does falter a bit on the artwork, but
generally it’s a good sendoff to the title.
SPOILERS FOLLOW…………
We deal with two contrasting timelines, as Barbiere peels
back some shocking details about Ray.
First, we see him in the morgue with a one of Ultra’s
‘victims’ on November 8, 2012. Even as he analyzes the gaping hole left in the
corpse’s chest, he finds out that some of the residual DNA from Ultra had a
healing component.
This leads to him investigating more Supers related
incidents, and he builds a solid case to be presented to Biochem. Meeting
Janine, he secured Biochem’s co-operation, but inserted a clause that allowed
his brother Denny to be part of this operation (and its assumed head).
We get a lot of insight in Ray’s thoughts from this. His
motives seem both altruistic and selfish at the same time. He wants vindication
after his shaming, and harbors resentment towards the gods who fly in the skies
– but also wants to make sure nobody goes through what he’s suffering now with
his wife.
He even involves his brother in this, even after everything
that’s gone wrong in their relationship.
Jumping into the present, we see Bruiser dressed up as one
of Ultra’s rogues, alongside Ray and Denny, robbing a bank. Ultra responds
brutality, punching a hole in Bruiser and then breaking Denny’s arm.
While Ultra is occupied, Ray manages to shoot him with the
suppressor. It’s interesting that Ultra is also trying to espouse that he’s
doing this because ‘he’s the hero’, but is actually on an arrogant power trip,
not caring who he hurts.
Ray finally reveals everything to a seriously injured Denny,
but the interaction with Janine goes less well than desired – she kills Denny
and tells Ray to walk away from this.
But he wasn’t done – using his own sources, Ray implicated
Janine and Biochem in the disappearance of Supers, and the Supers brutally took
her out.
Ultra’s death apparently brought the Supers and humans
closer, but not before Ray was able to synthesize a universal cure. We finally
cut back to see who Ray was talking to – and it seems a sinister bunch named
Perseus.
And with finality, Ray acknowledges that he’s no hero,
though he maimed and killed several ‘monsters’ like Perseus for the good of
humanity – but wonders whether that didn’t make him a monster like them?
There are problems though. Denny is reduced to being a
vehicle for Ray’s crusade, while his wife is isolated to plot device standards.
The ‘evil corporation’ Biochem and Janine are flat antagonists in that they’re
very thinly (or not at all) fleshed out. Again, a product of the 80 page limit
of this title.
SPOILERS END………..
A thoughtful story with some strong themes that were a bit
lacking in execution, mostly due to a stringent four issue limit, Barbiere
manages to do a lot in a little.
His exploration of both man’s frailties and resourcefulness
in the faces of higher beings was very good.
Victor Santos evoked Cooke’s artwork well, and Ray’s final
facial expression is a wonderful summary of everything he’s done so far.
So, I give this 7.0 out of 10.
+Some great exploration of the Super vs man theme
+The protagonist’s complexity is well done
+Some great artwork
-Most of the characters are rendered as plot devices
-The pacing is rushed.
No comments:
Post a Comment