Golden goes an interesting route with this issue. He takes almost the entire issue to resolve last issue’s cliffhanger–he also explains why the guy who betrays SAMCRO does so in an almost too action-packed flashback. The cliffhanger resolution’s pretty simple….

The worst thing happens. Well, maybe not the worst. But Golden doesn’t give the cast a last minute save. He lays out the foreshadowing and then he delivers on it. It changes one’s expectations of where Golden’s willing to take the comic.

He does fill in way too much exposition though. The comic’s bursting with new characters to remember–most of them are just important names, not even on page–and it’s a lot to digest. Golden simplifies it a little bit towards the end, but an exposition recap of the too much exposition seems like a bad device.

Still, it’s solid. The soft cliffhanger’s a good one.

CREDITS

Writer, Christopher Golden; penciller, Damian Couceiro; inkers, Couceiro and Emilio Lecce; colorist, Stephen Downer; letterer, Ed Dukeshire; editor, Dafna Pleban; publisher, Boom! Studios.