I feel almost silly writing this review. With how crazy my life has been, I just haven’t had time to read my books in a timely. But, I read this issue today, and I can’t express how completely disappointed I was both in this issue and this mini-series.

Let’s start with the issue first. On the art side of things, Everything remained very solid. Every panel had lots of detail and the action was smooth and easy to follow. Unfortunately for me, the art was not accompanied by a very good story. I sort of finished this issue and thought, “What the what?” I mean, I literally have no idea what happened in this issue. Add to it that I have no idea what the point of the entire mini series was, and you find me struggling to understand what this story was for. The words were obtuse and not very clear, and of course, the character interactions didn’t help to clarify anything. All of the time jumping in this issue didn’t help either as I was trying to sequence events…and then my brain exploded.

As a miniseries, this story fails to deliver. I recognize the concept that Hickman is trying to produce here, but it’s completely lost in his story. I don’t understand what any of the events in the previous 3 issues had to do with the finale, and it left me wondering if maybe this would have made a better one-shot or two issue series. There’s all these events in the other issues, like the main character getting his plane, his best friend rising in the ranks of pilots, and of course, the journey of his father, but none of these help contribute in any way to a satisfactory ending, and they just seem like filler to pad the whole thing out. This is just one of those Hickman stories that just doesn’t work for me. In a way, the whole project sort of seems self-indulgent and maybe a little too confident. Sure, he’s been writing great comics over at Marvel, but maybe he needs to continue working on building worlds that can grab readers. He can obviously do it, as he’s done in other creative endeavors, but maybe he’s a bit rusty and tried something a little too high concept for his first foray back into the mix. Or maybe, it’s just me looking too much into the whole thing. Either way, I was disappointed by this issue and by this mini.