Spawn

[HellsRider]

Caught up on the Spawn Universe books and going forward I'm not going to recap much of Gunslinger or Scorched until they are where King Spawn & the main Spawn book are at in a quality sense at least to me. Gunslinger #7 sees Gunslinger fight a werewolf named Carnivore until they stop and Carnivore goes away which leads to Gunslinger finding Jessica Priest so she can tell him about Al and a bar fight is about to start to end the issue. Really not much going on there. Scorched #5 fares a bit better though with the team fighting the Sin Devourer from the last issue which leads to Natasha revealing to the team that everything they have encountered so far - the Russian general with Plague, Soul Crusher, rescuing Reaper from the angels, & the Sin Devourers - was all planned by someone named The Buyer who has it out for the entire team and then Natasha and Sergei die as the original Plague Spawn looks on. Definitely a better issue from the last one as its mostly a fight issue and I hope Gunslinger and Medieval give Al grief for not finding out from Soul Crusher what he knew about sending them back to their respective time periods.

King Spawn #9 - Al goes to the Greenworld to see if Black Azrael was BS'ing him or not with respect to Wanda and we get our first look at Gaia. We get a bit of a battle with Al against Heap, Oracle, and Simon the latter of which has aged but doesn't pose a challenge to Al at all. Gaia then recalls her troops and reveals Wanda stating that because Azrael brought her to the Greenworld Azrael has both Wanda and her rights and the only way to undo that is for Al to become king because he'll then have the power to bring Heaven's souls from the dead. Gaia then says that when that happens, Azrael promises that all Heaven and Hell forces would leave Earth forever letting Earth flourish once again and if Al doesn't do this then Gaia will destroy Wanda. The problem? For Al to become king he has to let go what has been fueling him since he came back to Earth - his anger. Very interesting issue that lays to rest the doubt that Al and even the reader may have about everything and I'm curious to see where things go from here as Al is now between a rock and a hard place. Shame that Javi didn't do this issue as it would have been interesting to see his version of Gaia, but Thomas Nachlik does a good job keeping in line with the look of the book so kudos there and besides having read #10 Javi comes back like a force of nature. This coming week sees the release of King Spawn volume 1 which collects the entire first arc of the book and if you have been a lapsed fan or want to see what the fuss is about, I recommend checking it out as this is far and away the best book of the Universe books.

Spawn #329 - a Forsaken-centric issue and I like it. We get a story from New Redeemer telling Al about how Redeemers and the Forsaken came to be. We then see Forsaken face a Spawn until Al and Redeemer step in which Cordelia is worried about. The captured Hellspawns arrive to get Forsaken out of there, but Forsaken is having none of it and battling New Redeemer, Forsaken remembers everything and speeds off to Cordelia and her base to wipe it out. Meanwhile, the news are talking about the guy that turned into Detective Spawn in the last issue and Downing and Haunt meet for the first time in a meeting that I thought would happen during the Downing era which may lead to the final pages we saw in the Scorched #5. I liked that this we popped the cork on Forsaken and how we got to know more about Redeemers in general and I am curious to see what happens next not only on that end, but by Forsaken leaving so fast it left the captured Hellspawns with Al and Redeemer so I'm interested to see if something will come of that. Nice to see Downing and Haunt finally meet and the news bit at least was story centric which these last several issues have done a good job of being that as if the series wants to have a media angle then this is the best way to do it. Overall, I liked the issue as well and can't wait for the next one.