Choices
(Spoiler free-ish)
SynopsisTHE DYING OF THE LIGHT part 4! Twilight’s last gleaming! The end is nigh. No chance of escape. No last-minute reprieve. But nothing loosens the tongue like imminent death, and the crew of the Lost Light use their final hours to say what—until now—was unsayable.
Geddit? lights dying?The Light keeps dying, slowly, inexorably, irreparably, and we are witnesses to the events as they unfold, as James Roberts allows them to, and we are left without choice (other than not to read the story, of course) - in a manner very similar to the characters in this issue, faced with choices, the illusion of such, and a lot of emotions.
Average MTMTE readerAnd with a lot of emotions, come a lot of storylines: we have Nightbeat's intrigue with the hollow planet, and his co-opting of Rung, we have whatever Minimus Ambus and Brainstorm are doing, we have Ratchet and Velocity, Nautica and her group, Chromedome recovering, Megatron being repaired, the DJD just waiting, Whirl and Cyclonus. I could go on.
New mystery; where are Rung's glasses?Don't get me wrong, though, there are some stellar character moments for pretty much all of the cast members in the book. And it also manages to deal quite nicely, and deeply (and on multiple fronts) with big themes such as addiction, the overwhelming fears running through the whole cast of the issue, friendship and love, and the pain that the latter two can bring as side effects.
Not pictured: your gutThere's ..a lot in here. And not all of it necessarily meshes that well together. We see it in the opening preview, with Nautica's otherwise very touching moment as she sees the end coming - a moment which feels too short taken within the frame of the whole issue, and that is a real shame. But more below.
ArtAlex Milne is the main artist on the book, though the Whirl/Cyclonus sequence is actually the talented hands of Hayato Sakamoto, and it shows. Not just the parallels, but the issues that come across in the script in terms of pacing are visually redeemed (for me at least) by punching the 'meanwhile' technique is a truly spectacular way. And one panel, that one panel, THAT PANEL, is almost painful.
Not showing it of courseJoana Lafuente's gradual transition in colour palettes, from the arrival on the beautifully lit Necroworld to now
Inevitability sucksTom B. Long takes the letters and makes sure we know exactly where to look, what to hear, and how loudly (or softly). In a text that so much unsaid finally spoken, the indication is needed, welcome, and part of the emotional package. The covers, on the other hand, do very little to hint at anything happening inside this book, though great they are! Priscilla Tramontano brings a much happier Swerve memory (thumbnail), as Josh Burcham and Sakamoto show off the threat that awaits, and Milne and Josh Perez look at that thread from our side of the fence.
ThoughtsSpoilerish aheadReader, I cried. Much like the issue in this series that provided the template for the culprit image, I felt the same build up on the page, in the characters, and inside my emotional chamber, as I was led to the resolution of that particular arc. It doesn't end there, of course, but if I have to talk about one moment, that is the one that stuck. The art, as I said above, is mostly to blame.
...ready?There are, I repeat here, some severe pacing issues, trying to fit in a number of personal narratives that just do not survive the composition, either coming across as rushed, disjointed or even shoehorned in - which the visuals do wonders with. It's a collection of character moments, beautiful, each unique in their own way, and well-done taken separately. But we need the climax. It is time.
