Conway partially succeeds at getting a good finish for the series. He tries really hard and some of that trying hurts the issue. He does these alternating first person narration boxes; they’re well-intentioned and I have no idea another way he could have played the scene, but they don’t work. Luckily, he’s got Garcia-Lopez on the art and it at least gives the impression of being right.

Most of the issue is flashback stuff, recounting the lives of the characters once they got to the States from Vietnam. It’s all interesting backstory stuff, but it doesn’t jibe with the present action, which is basically an action issue. Maybe Conway needed more space.

The art is in some ways the best while also being the least ambitious of the series. Garcia-Lopez doesn’t have a lot of flashy content here, just story.

The series is a good, problematic effort.

It’s the first issue where nothing incredibly awful happens. Or maybe Conway’s just numbed the reader at this point. It’s also the first where the dialect is presented as a language. There’s no more painful translating from French to English.

Garcia-Lopez also gets in his best art of the series so far. He’s had the opportunity for emotive panel layout before this issue, but here his layouts are sometimes startling. It’s an amazing looking issue.

Conway gets around to revealing the big conspiracy behind the story and he handles it very well. It’s not a subtle thing, but he never lets it get out of hand. While it’s a relatively common conspiracy revelation, it’s never predictable before this issue (though there’s a giveaway early on in these pages). Conway’s finally found the perfect formula for Cinder and Ashe.

It’s amazing how not translating the French makes the narration work.

Conway and Garcia-Lopez definitely get an “A” for effort. They both are very deliberate on Cinder and Ashe but Conway tells the story in alternating first person narration and it just isn’t going to work with this kind of thing.

As awful as the events in this issue—and there are two or three really rough moments—first person narration isn’t going to work. Conway’s characters don’t react naturally to the visuals. There are flashbacks, usually transitioned from visual cues, but they’re expository. It’s never believable the characters think back to informative scenes in their pasts when events occur. There’s one moment where he does it just in narration and it works a lot better.

The narration also blocks the reader from really getting to know the characters—we only get to see what Conway wants us to see.

Still, he’s doing something very earnestly. Good intentions help here.

Conway uses a lot of dialect in Cinder and Ashe for his Cajun character. I understand why he uses it—and for a Cajun accent, it makes more sense than for something else, I suppose—but it’s still… dialect.

The issue starts off as an action book, not a private investigator book (the characters are troubleshooters, think “Magnum, P.I.” set in New Orleans with a duo who have a complicated backstory) and the Garcia-Lopez artwork is lovely.

Conway pushes hard to establish his characters as good guys in a bad world, which comes off as a little heavy handed in the first ten pages, but then things get complicated and his writing becomes a little more subtle and affecting.

He seems to be trying to do a serious action crime comic book and he succeeds overall. He’s got three more issues to go though.

Having Garcia-Lopez doesn’t hurt.