A fast paced and chaotic ending.
Creative Staff:
Story: Eric Heisserer
Art: Felipe Massafera
What They Say:
As Cal Victus unleashes destruction on the Shaper home planet, the team rallies for one last chance at taking down an empire and saving the shape-shifting species! Spry has played many games of Heroes of the Caliphate, but this is no game, and all cards are on the table!
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
I won’t say I struggled with Shaper as a series overall, but it proved to be a challenge at times to get into its dynamic. As it revealed itself to be more of a space opera/fantasy rather than a more traditional science fiction story, the elements fell into place a bit better and the overall experience was fun, but it felt like it had so many ideas and foundational pieces it wanted to put in that it didn’t know how to do it. It’s not an intricately built world, but it’s an expansive one and that’s a hard thing to make resonate well without enough supporting material to really get you into it. The biggest issue for me though is that as it added and grew the cast along the way, it ended up with no true central character.
With this finale, there’s a lot of events going on but it’s done in a way that really feels disconnected, especially since the main cast that have rallied around our central character of Spry are off doing their own thing. The space battle that’s going on is pushed into the background for the most part, though we see the alignment of forces picking up to make it a dangerous place to be in general. That provides a little more of a grand feeling, but when it tries to go and become more personal, it lacks a real connection. After getting a deeper look at why Victus has been acting as he has towards the Shapers, we get his final battle here as Spry and his mother go to deal with him aboard his command ship. Honestly, it was hard to even remember who Spry was in part of this because he’s been shunted to the background. And it’s worse with his mother. That the two are able to defeat him with some teamwork isn’t bad, but it just lacked any impact.
And that fight across its various permutations in this installment takes up most of the book. It’s definitely well illustrated and I liked the action of it and the use of the Shaper abilities as well as the way Victus fights back against them. But there’s an emptiness about it. And with the way it takes up so much of the book, rightly so, it pushes the other fights further to the background. Our cowboy type with Galaxian has a minor fight that works well against his longstanding and powerful opponent, but even that felt hollow and by the numbers as it progressed, working through the whole airlock cliche fight sequence. That the book causes as much chaos as it does throughout the Caliphate is no surprise, something that we get for basically a panel or so, but it comes across as trying too hard to echo Star Wars in a way with what it’s doing. Or at least that’s the impression I get, which doesn’t help it in the slightest.
In Summary:
In the end, Shaper was not what I thought it would be based on that first cover and promotional image. I liked a lot of the ideas in it, but it didn’t come together in a way that felt engaging, particularly since it had to work such a larger story into a compressed format without the spacing it needed to really flesh things out. It’s easy to view this as a kind of storyboard pitch for a film and that way it breaks out really reinforces that. But it didn’t take advantage of the serialized comic format to really do something big or unique and instead felt like it was pulling from several popular ideas, such as the card game thing, and applying it to a more traditional overall story idea. The final issue kind of falls apart in making it feel like it has any weight to it, which is unfortunate since it has some fun and interesting characters to work with that didn’t get enough time to be developed. The saving grace is some really well done artwork and panel layouts that makes it a fun enough read even if the ideas are far too familiar.
Grade: C
Age Rating: 16+
Released By: Dark Horse Comics
Release Date: July 15th, 2015
MSRP: $3.99
