Image Comic of the Week - Week 11 (11/3/2015)

[TotalSnorefest]

While other indie publishers are getting nine figure movie deals, over at the Image forum the debut issue of the movie-optioned (though probably not for a nine figure sum) Descender completely dominated last week's poll by raking in nearly half of all votes cast. Let's see what it looks like this week!

This week we get the end of Sheltered, the penultimate issue of which was pretty popular in these threads last month - will the finale nail the ending? There's a special one-shot called Spawn: Resurrection out this week to mark the new direction of the book. We've also got 2 new launches: Southern Cross sees Becky Cloonan writing a sci-fi/horror series which has been getting some positive buzz online already, and Ales Kot re-teams with Langdon Foss and Jordie Bellaire to present The Surface.

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[Ragdoll]

This week is going to be Sheltered Vs Walking Dead for me.

[InformationGeek]

Still waiting on Southern Cross to read before I vote, but I did read and review Sheltered #15. Just to remind everyone, I gave#14 a high score of a 10 out of 10. Just as perfect of a climax as you could hope for with this series. #15 is essentially the epilogue and if the writer stuck the landing on this, I would have been shouting the series' praise from the rooftops.

Unfortunately, the the writer did not stick the landing and instead, broke both of his legs upon hitting the ground. It was going so perfectly and making me so happy, but then the final two damn panels of the issue.... thanks for nothing! ARGH.

You can read my review here. Warning though, there are spoilers to be found. Just know that the score is a 5.5 out of 10 if you are curious, but don't want to read the review just yet until you read the issue.

[Detox]

It's EoW, Sheltered, Postal and trying out Southern Cross for me this week. I think it's gonna be hard to beat Sheltered's finale but we shall see.

[Ragdoll]

Still waiting on Southern Cross to read before I vote, but I did read and review Sheltered #15. Just to remind everyone, I gave#14 a high score of a 10 out of 10. Just as perfect of a climax as you could hope for with this series. #15 is essentially the epilogue and if the writer stuck the landing on this, I would have been shouting the series' praise from the rooftops.

Unfortunately, the the writer did not stick the landing and instead, broke both of his legs upon hitting the ground. It was going so perfectly and making me so happy, but then the final two damn panels of the issue.... thanks for nothing! ARGH.

You can read my review here. Warning though, there are spoilers to be found. Just know that the score is a 5.5 out of 10 if you are curious, but don't want to read the review just yet until you read the issue.

Oh man, in the last weekly vote thread, I made a prediction for the final issue, and you said that you would HATE it if it happened. I'm not peeking at the review and spoilers, but have a feeling I know what is about to go down if you changed your tune so suddenly from an ending.

[Joker]

Casanova by a country fucking mile. This book is so good.

[Detox]

Casanova by a country fucking mile. This book is so good.

Haven't read this, but soon may start. I really liked EoW this week, I feel like it's getting back on track as it kinda lost me for a coupla months there. Southern Cross was pretty good, it did a decent job of setting things up and I enjoyed the art quite a bit. I(just like geek) was disappointed with the way Sheltered ended in those last 2 panels, but who am I to complain. It was an amazing series and I will miss it. The surprise book and the one that gets my vote this week is Postal. I am really really enjoying this so far, it is a great looking book with a cool story and this issue has left me wanting more. I definitely recommend it to those who haven't given it a shot yet.

[Ragdoll]

Welp, I totally called the ending of Sheltered. I loved it, but can see how it is polarizing to others.

I voted for Walking Dead because it made me cry.

[skyjumpermike]

Still waiting on Southern Cross to read before I vote, but I did read and review Sheltered #15. Just to remind everyone, I gave#14 a high score of a 10 out of 10. Just as perfect of a climax as you could hope for with this series. #15 is essentially the epilogue and if the writer stuck the landing on this, I would have been shouting the series' praise from the rooftops.

Unfortunately, the the writer did not stick the landing and instead, broke both of his legs upon hitting the ground. It was going so perfectly and making me so happy, but then the final two damn panels of the issue.... thanks for nothing! ARGH.

You can read my review here. Warning though, there are spoilers to be found. Just know that the score is a 5.5 out of 10 if you are curious, but don't want to read the review just yet until you read the issue.

I think you are out of your mind. I loved the ending. I Saw it coming. But I loved it. You Thought the whole story was pointless if it ended this way? Every story will ultimately end with death. I Think that is the point.

[rac shade]

Still waiting on Southern Cross to read before I vote, but I did read and review Sheltered #15. Just to remind everyone, I gave#14 a high score of a 10 out of 10. Just as perfect of a climax as you could hope for with this series. #15 is essentially the epilogue and if the writer stuck the landing on this, I would have been shouting the series' praise from the rooftops.

Unfortunately, the the writer did not stick the landing and instead, broke both of his legs upon hitting the ground. It was going so perfectly and making me so happy, but then the final two damn panels of the issue.... thanks for nothing! ARGH.

You can read my review here. Warning though, there are spoilers to be found. Just know that the score is a 5.5 out of 10 if you are curious, but don't want to read the review just yet until you read the issue.

We all knew how Sheltered was going to end so to suggest that the last 2 panels ruined one of the best series in recent memory is ridiculous, some of the art looked a bit rushed but that aside I thought it was a stellar finale.

[InformationGeek]

I think you are out of your mind. I loved the ending. I Saw it coming. But I loved it. You Thought the whole story was pointless if it ended this way? Every story will ultimately end with death. I Think that is the point.

We all knew how Sheltered was going to end so to suggest that the last 2 panels ruined one of the best series in recent memory is ridiculous, some of the art looked a bit rushed but that aside I thought it was a stellar finale.

If you liked it, you liked it. I thought it was bad, made no sense, and that it was frustrating, hitting upon two of my biggest problems and pet peeves in fiction.

1. A Kill them all ending (Yes, eventually everyone will died in a story, even if that's a cynical way of looking at that, but stories usually end before that. I'm talking about an ending that just ends the story with killing everyone. It feels like everything is pointless in the story then because none of its the decisions, stories, characters, and everything else mattered. It's like to me an "It was all just a dream", ending.

2. A last minute twist or story point that tries to end a story as dark or depressing as possible. They always feel cheap and tacked on, even if it was planned this way (talking to Brisson about the ending on twitter, he mentioned that it was planned to end like this from the beginning). I've just never seen it work before in any medium and it still didn't work here I find.


Everything else about the issue was fantastic, but a last minute twist to make this as dark and depressing as possible was extremely irritating and ruined the experience I felt. Everyone will probably disagree, but that's how I felt and it's not like I wanted to hate on this series. I loved it and thought the ride was great, but the destination was terrible.

[Ragdoll]

I don't think the end of Sheltered is the same as if something was all a dream. If it was a dream, the characters ultimately couldn't have really changed anything. The final 2 issues really hammer home the point that if they had gotten their shit together and not behaved like children, it would've had a happy ending. It reminded me a lot of Lord Of The Flies but on a more epic scale in terms of what was at stake. If anything, the ending will make a re-read more satisfying, and I rarely re-read things, but now I need to so I can analyze who was actually right and where they could've changed things to survive.

[InformationGeek]

I don't think the end of Sheltered is the same as if something was all a dream. If it was a dream, the characters ultimately couldn't have really changed anything. The final 2 issues really hammer home the point that if they had gotten their shit together and not behaved like children, it would've had a happy ending. It reminded me a lot of Lord Of The Flies but on a more epic scale in terms of what was at stake. If anything, the ending will make a re-read more satisfying, and I rarely re-read things, but now I need to so I can analyze who was actually right and where they could've changed things to survive.

I doubt it would have been a happy ending, even if they did get it all together. Super volcanoes are pretty nasty and I really don't see how they would have survived... unless they were maybe living at the other end of the country away from it. I forget, where Safe Haven was actually located? I believe the comic mentioned the state at point, but I'm blanking on it.

As for who was right in the end, no one was really right. Lucas was probably the closest to being right with coming up plans to survive, but pretty much everything he did was wrong and or he went about the wrong way of doing it.

[InformationGeek]

Well anyways, I finished reading all of my Indie books this week, so here's how it came out...

Coffin Hill #16 (didn't review this month. Decent overall though)
Postal #2 (didn't review. Good book, don't care a bit for the artwork)
Copperhead Vol. 1: A Sheriff in Town
Shutter #15
Southern Cross #1 (didn't review. Rather underwhelming and kind of dull. 6 out of 10)
Sheltered #15 (oh, you all know my thoughts already)

Can't say that this was a spectacular week for Image or Indie books (the manga I read was pretty good though except for Ultra Battle Satellite). At best, the comics were fine and at worst, they were disappointing. Postal wins by default. Maybe next week there will be something spectacular.

[wwise03]

I thought southern cross was fantastic! Every bit as good as Descender