Writer Peter Milligan takes another approach with this issue’s narrative distance, back to Nina heavily narrating, but now she’s interrogating herself. As the deadline for Absolution draws near, she has to ask herself questions about who she wants to be. Or something. Milligan hints at what’s behind her character development, but he’s boxed Nina in, so she can’t do anything with it. She can’t even think it to herself. Otherwise, the reader would be clued in, and Milligan couldn’t do a twist.

“Twist.”

The issue also trashes the concept of the series as a procedural. When Nina does get around to the series’s last mission, Milligan shoehorns it in. He also repeats a story twist from last issue with it, which is something he just did last issue. I thought Absolution was a four-issue series stretched to five, but it’s a three stretched to four stretched to five. Milligan just decorates the story beats a little differently.

He also doesn’t give artist Mike Deodato Jr. anything interesting to draw this issue. I mean, torture stuff? A Reservoir Dogs nod? It’s definitely not finale-worthy material. Some of the point is in the anti-climatic nature of the narrative, but… Milligan and Deodato should’ve figured out a way to make it work.

Though Milligan’s narration writing is his worst on the book, I don’t think I’d have kept going if he’d had this narration in the first issue. The most disappointing thing about the bad narration is Milligan’s bored. He’s not blathering on because he’s excited about the content; he’s just trying to write the comic to a finish. It’s mawkish.

Absolution’s been a bumpy ride, but I wasn’t expecting Milligan to run out of gas with the finish line in sight. I mean, I expected the character arc he started last issue to not resolve well in this issue, but he flushes that approach and starts fresh with the bad narration instead.

It’s bewildering. However, it’s also confusing why he never established a distinct storytelling approach. Instead, he tried a bunch—one an issue—but for absolutely no reason in the end.

He had a slick, pulpy exploitation story and went trite with it.

Bummer.

As I finished reading this issue of Absolution, I realized—despite artist Mike Deodato Jr.’s photo-referencing—the comic hasn’t established who they’re pitching with the lead role. When the creators muse about the adaptation, who’s playing Nina?

Because she’s got some character development this issue—she’s got a love interest in Ann, the street doctor who saved her butt last issue when she got duped by a target. But she’s also on a mission with this issue’s target—a child molester who keeps getting away. As a villain, he’s only slightly different than last issue’s villain, except this guy doesn’t get two issues of setup. But he does get to outsmart Nina, which is basically what all the bad guys (all men) do in Absolution. Of course, they’re smarter than her, but she’s stronger than them, so she wins.

Or she has friends, while they just have goons.

She also starts interacting with the viewers in a more obvious way than ever before, pausing a real-life conversation to reply to a tweet. It’s immediately obvious writer Peter Milligan should’ve been doing them the whole time—it really would’ve helped with the last issue’s setup, too—but it’s also too late at this point. It seems unlikely, as does Nina getting tricked immediately after the last time.

The beginning of the issue makes a surprisingly strong case for Absolution as a procedural. Nina hunts some guy down but still doesn’t get a high enough score; she then Lonely Man hoofs it to the next issue. It’s surprisingly strong partially because, by the end of the issue, it’s clear Milligan only had enough story for four issues and drug the story out to five.

It’s an okay comic. Deodato doesn’t have Nina’s walk down, which only matters now when she’s doing lots of daytime walking, but it’s definitely something he should have done this far into the book. There’s some good, compelling thriller writing from Milligan.

But starting a character development arc in the penultimate issue after shrugging it off when there was actual time? Absolution’s landing roughly.

Artist Mike Deodato Jr. gets a little too bored with the art this issue—it’s another fight scene at night in a skyscraper. That repetitiveness figures into the problem Absolution’s revealing about itself writ large. The concept lends itself too much to repetitive storytelling. High-tech super-assassin Nina needs to kill bad guys in a way to score approval with her (civilian) audience, who watch her stream. And because the future’s just as shitty as the present, she’s got to be sexy doing it (which raises a question for later). So she does well, her score goes up. Then she goes something wrong, or something bad happens, and her score goes down. So she needs to do well again. But then something will go wrong again.

She starts this issue with an easy kill, but then it immediately goes wrong. So wrong a micro-bomb goes off in her brain to remind her to work harder. The explosion knocks her out, and she wakes up at the doctor’s. Not the legit doctor, but the underground “help those in need” doctor. This introduces a new character—Ann—who’s non-binary, which is apparently a thing for the comic so writer Peter Milligan can muse on whether non-binary people are real. Except Ann’s also… Nina’s only real friend and a good one at that, so… his musing’s confused and unnecessary.

That musing figures into the main plot, which has Nina deciding the way to get her score up is to off the rapist introduced last issue. The first page of this issue is post-rape, which needlessly gives Absolution some grit cred. It turns out the rapist is a high-powered businessman who sues anyone who threatens to talk about him being a rapist, including Woody Harrelson and the other talk show hosts.

I’m not sure this guy’s a believable villain. I mean, he’s a believable villain, but nothing about Absolution’s future implies he’d be considered one.

Once he’s established, it’s all about Nina taking him out. And, of course, what will go wrong when she does. It also reveals a problem with the scoring system. Milligan really needed to explain it better.

But it’s compelling and whatnot. However, Deodato ends up drawing people in the same scene at all different kinds of scale. He doesn’t even have time for fun photo-referenced faces. And I hope they don’t try to turn it into a streaming series. It’s clearly only got enough story for a ninety-minute and change movie.

I’m unsurprised to see writer Peter Milligan downshift Absolution’s pace this issue. The action opens on streaming assassin Nina finishing her outing from last issue and quickly becomes about establishing the actual ground situation. First issue, Milligan did the world set-up; now it’s time to lay out Nina’s “normal” life.

While the action might open on Nina, the issue starts with a yucky one-page scene introducing one of Nina’s fans, a masseuse coerced by a powerful customer. Throughout the issue, the fan—Stevie—messages Nina, and it’s not clear how Nina reads those messages (or any of the messages). Milligan still uses Nina as a first-person narrator, but the stream comments add a different layer. The reader’s experiencing both, and even though I’m not a fan of stream comments, they’re a successful device.

Less successful is the brief panel discussions about Nina and her assassinating. Andy Garcia cameos as Nina’s doctor, who scrapped the killer instinct out of her brain (which also comes up in Nina’s plot line a bit). Artist Mike Deodato Jr. barely tries to disguise the photo referenced Garcia, though no one else this issue (except Woody Harrelson as the panel host again) jumps out.

Milligan and Deodato do Absolution as an eighties cyberpunk, with revised futurism and dystopian details. Unfortunately, the panel’s dated, and if Milligan weren’t being so obvious, it’d be more successful.

But the plot’s moving into unexpected territory, at least based on the plotting so far. I’m waiting to see how Milligan paces next issue. He’s got choices.

Absolution’s an okay “soft sci-fi” action book. It’s compelling and looks good. Some of the writing’s problematic—the panels and their smooth-talking liberal intellectual guests—but the rest makes up.

Despite the Blade Runner font on the cover and the future vibe, Absolution is—so far—just a future dystopia action comic. I’m hesitant even to call it sci-fi. The potential science behind the fiction is all general stuff: the protagonist, Nina, is an assassin on potential parole. Potential meaning if she gets a high enough score for killing bad guys during her live streams, she’ll get an acquittal.

If she fails, they’ll blow up her head because, you know, “Suicide Squad”’s old enough (and ubiquitous enough) to be trope fodder.

The issue’s just her latest hit, with some flashbacks and then commentary from the commentators. Nina narrates, which writer Peter Milligan relies heavily on to carry some of the story. Artist Mike Deodato Jr. draws one heck of a corporate future dystopia city, and the stylistic panel grids nicely juxtapose the action and exposition. But the issue’s very much setup, including lots of Nina’s backstory (for now, you’re not going to not reveal something about your assassin anti-hero in later issues), so Deodato could potentially shake up the style.

While streaming, shitty white men on the Internet comment on her not being attractive enough to them and complain about, you know, brown people existing. I wonder how these future stories are going to age in twenty years.

But it’s solid action. Having everyone be shitty to her helps make Nina sympathetic (though there’s some concern in how Milligan writes the female stream commentator, who throws out non-sequiturs about sexism because she’s all the way caricature).

Speaking of character and caricature… Deodato bases faces on real people. Gerard Depardieu plays the issue villain, and I think Woody Harrelson’s one of the stream commentators. It’s kind of fun. Also, it tracks Depardieu’s such a garbage guy.