It’s an all action issue. I’m not sure there’s time for anything else in this series besides action. At best a page or two, here and there, with the characters preparing for their eventual participation in the action. It’s good and pulpy.
One definite standout is the color from Stephen Downer; whoever decided to make the blood blue to make it stand out (there’s still red blood around… oceans of it), whether it was Downer or the editor or whoever, it’s a good choice. It draws attention to the violence, it makes the danger vibrant.
But it’s hard to say how well Golden can wrap this whole thing up. He’s got his major plots, but all the subplots have fallen away. It’s doesn’t feel like episodic but it also doesn’t feel like the girl on the run’s story.
Still, it’s definitely a good read for a licensed comic. Just slight.
B-
CREDITS
Writer, Christopher Golden; artist, Damian Couceiro; colorist, Stephen Downer; letterer, Ed Dukeshire; editor, Dafna Pleban; publisher, Boom! Studios.
This issue is heavy on the action. It doesn’t seem like it’s going to be heavy on the action, but it definitely ends up that way. Couceiro does a great job toggling between action and talking heads. It’s the way he paces the sequences–somehow he uses the same pace for both talking and action. Works out well.
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….
Golden might have written himself into a corner with this issue’s soft cliffhanger. It might deal with too much continuity from the source television show for a fresh comic reader to pick it up.
It’s a little too soon to tell how Sons of Anarchy, one of the more unlikely licensed comics one can imagine, will pan out, but the first issue suggests it will go well.
So did Boom! cancel,Cataclysm, did the writers quit or did the license go away? Something obviously happened. This issue jumps three years ahead of the previous one, then another five years from where it opens.
Big reveals, small reveals. Along with the biggest of them all–the twelfth issue is the finale, something I didn’t realize.
Maybe killing the talking human is why Cornelius doesn’t remember her when Chuck Heston shows up, but it’s hard to say. But she doesn’t die this issue, just gets her throat slit. Meaning maybe her vocal cords are damaged… which seems like it’s been in an Apes comic somewhere before.
I can’t believe I’m going to make this statement–Bechko and Hardman are playing too loose with Apes movie continuity. I don’t even like the movies. But they’ve got a talking human here eight years before Charlton Heston shows up and Cornelius sees and hears her.
The story arc, so far as it involves the ape expedition to the valley–I’m liking Bechko and Hardman not getting locked into actual titled arcs–comes to a close.