Forever Evil #6 Review

Dis-assembly.

We’ve come to the end stages of Forever Evil, and Johns gives us his A+ game here. There’s so much awesome packed into this one issue that it rivals some of the ‘best event moments’.

It’s not undue praise. Forever Evil has been generally good and fun to read, but hasn’t reached the stages where his Green Lantern run reached. Well, this issue is the ‘hell yeah’ moment.

Finch also comes into his own here, and after some inconsistent pencil-work in his previous issues, the art here is superlative, especially given that there is chaos here.

We get some answers and as is Johns wont, some more questions also. But the best thing I can say about this is – there is no evil villain monologing here, just page after page of non-stop great moments.

SPOILERS FOLLOW……………………

Lex surveys the fallen watchtower alongside, of all people, Batman. They decide that the mother-box can get them only so far before Grid discovers them, so they use the wet route.

At York, the Syndicate debate how to close the dimensional rift in-front of them, while destroying the power ring sending out the signal to their pursuer. Earth 3 Alfred interrupts Owlman by telling him that Grid has apparently done something very serious to Nightwing.

Sinestro’s ring brings them near the watchtower, where we see Bizarro continue to evolve as he mentions in complete words that no one is inside. Sinestro confirms that there are currently two inside and six more 142 miles North of abnormal vibrational signatures.

As Batman operates a manual override to get into the watchtower (with Luthor having something to say about this), he encounters what Grid has done to Nightwing – alive but imprisoned in the worst possible way.  He has been strapped to the Murder Machine.

As the cameras go out, Earth 3 Alfred informs Owlman that the facility is under attack, but Owlman persists in saying that Nightwing’s release is his only objective. It reflects Batman’s desire to save Dick above all else very well.

Alfred disobeys and goes to their ‘prisoner’. No sooner is he in that Black Manta grabs him and we get the first casualty of this issue as his throat is cut.

Batman tries to get Nightwing free and we get a callback to Death of the Family. A bomb countdown starts.

Deathstroke, Sinestro and Black Adam locate the unstable Firestorm, but before they can react to this development, the Syndicate arrives. Black Adam takes on Ultraman, taking the fight outside, while Owlman leaves, apparently to find Nightwing.

Batman’s group is barricaded in and Bruce mentions the cell was designed to hold Doomsday. The murder machine on the other hand has the bomb armed directly to Dick’s heartbeat, only disarming when it stops.

Captain Cold takes off the mask of the prisoner just as Johny Quick and Atomica arrive. While Atomica struggles against Manta’s impenetrable armor, Johny is able to disarm Cold. But using a code word (and a really funny one at that!), he is able to freeze Quick’s right leg and shatter it.

Johns handles Cold brilliantly here, right from his dialogue to his actions.

Elsewhere, Lex decides to take a radical step as he neutralizes Bruce and then proceeds to kill Nightwing. And then everything goes to hell.

The prisoner calls out ‘Shazam’ in reverse while Luthor achieves his goal – in a manner. Black Adam’s fight with Ultraman is interrupted as a lightning bolt falls on the watchtower.

As Lex tries to reason with an enraged Batman (seems Lex used the stop-his-heart-for-a-little cheat), the prisoner, now in reverse Shazam garb, kills Johny Quick and declares his name as ‘Alexander Luthor’ and that he is going to be the greatest hero that ever lived by killing every single one of the Syndicate – though his wording and facials leave his full ambitions ambiguous.

 

Johns and Finch were in their elements here. Johns gave Cold a great moment of his own, and delivered some revelations that were equal parts expected and gob-smacking. Many will have problems with Batman not figuring out a way to get Nightwing out (it seems Luthor did) but this is Bruce clutching at raw emotions, so I can give a pass this time.

I am happy that Nightwing survives another event though, and is seemingly not used as a cheap death here. Little touches like Owlman’s parallels with Batman regarding Dick and Bizarro continuing his evolution are well done and the pacing never suffers even though the split-into-teams routine is prevalent here.

Now onto the final antagonists. Alexander Luthor was one of the earliest predictions for the masked prisoner and Johns doesn’t serve up anything else. What is a great surprise here is his Shazam mode. Luthor is Earth 3’s Mightiest Mortal though it seems his position is a little ambiguous here. Will he go the Infinite Crisis Luthor way (by which I mean, kill everyone so that he’s the only sole hero) or not, is the question now.

As for the dimensional rift, Johns pushes that to the side for now. I’m not sure how he’s going to accommodate everything in one issue (Grid though seems like he’ll meet his comeuppance against Cyborg and the Metal Men in the pages of Justice League though), but it seems as though there are no more crossovers in the horizon right now for another story. I hope he can do it without any rushing.

SPOILERS END…………….

This is what we’ve been waiting for and while it took its sweet time, the battle has arrived! The stakes are raised and it’s a real page-turner.

The artwork is brilliant with Finch at his best while Johns delivers in all departments to make this an engrossing read.

So, I give it 10.0 out of 10.

+Some great artwork

+The pacing is excellent, with seamless transitions

+Some well delivered reveals

+Nice character moments

+A real page-turner

-Not exactly a complaint, but Johns leaves an awful lot to be covered in the last issue