You know, when a guy like Rick Remender can write a story about soul-sucking undead aliens from an advanced hyper-religious/scientific society which believed black holes to be the gateway to heaven for the soul, and you read and say, "Okay, I can buy that," then you know you've got a winner on your hands.

I have to say that I thought the start to Remender's Fear Agent series was a shakey, but fun, one. But more recently, and particularly with The Last Goodbye, this title has risen to the ranks of fantastic with me. I think this stems from two things primarily. One is Remender's loving treatment of "classic" sci-fi. His stories are brimming with imagination and wonder. I don't get the feeling that he's just warming over old cliches and plot devices (a concern I had when the series first started). Instead I get the same impressions that I get from reading old EC sci-fi comics, or Ray Bradbury stories, or watching shlocky 50's B-movies: that somehow this author has unrestrained his imagination, that he's not limiting his ideas to things that seem "real." Take the basic premise of this issue for instance (as I described it above). If it was approached with anything less than 100% confidence, then there's no way it would work. But Remender has that confidence, he's not trying to play it as a joke, or tongue in cheek, or anything else like that. And because of that, he pulls it off. Charlotte's reactions as she's listening to the hologram affect me, and again, I think that wouldn't work if the premise was presented at anything less than 100%.

Good cliffhanging, action-oriented ending on this one too. Man I like this series!