Staving off threats to the multiverse!
Creative Staff:
Story: Tim Seely, David Walker
Art: Fernando Dagnino
Colors: Sandra Molina
Letterer: Nate Piekos of Blambot
What They Say:
Tarzan and Caesar uncover more worlds than their own at stake when they follow a new ally below the surface of the earth to fight the monsters threatening to rise up.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
With one more issue to go, this series has proven with this one that it’s basically going to throw anything and everything at the reader. Honestly, Seely and Walker could have made this two dozen issues long and it will still feel stuffed with what it is that they’re trying to do. Doing it in five? That’s just crazy. Dagnino continues to deliver some great looking pages and the flow of the book works as well as it can as it tries to hit every big point while also bringing in some iconic moments. I don’t want to say it suffers because of the stuffing because it does, but it works so well to hit so many fun moments that I can’t bring myself to really complain.
The first half of the book works through the push in Pellucidar as Tarzan, Caesar, and all the others work to destroy the portals and focus on the final one. The losses are staggering at this point but the goal is beyond worthy considering the multiverse is at stake. There are some really nice moments with Caesar remembering his father’s journals and what they meant, reaffirming how there really isn’t much difference between man and ape when it comes to violence, and it reaffirms what he has to do to end everything. That final push is a whole lot of fun as they get to that portal that’s different than the rest and we see the two leaping through as it’s blown up since they can’t go back the way they came, what with the telepathic flying dinosaurs that want to rule everything and are kind of pissed off.
The back half of the book is weirdly chaotic as they’re thrown into the future timeline that we know from the original film, though Tarzan and Caesar are thrown in at different times. Tarzan ends up going off to help a bunch of humans that are being rounded up by apes after he sees the Statue of Liberty, which has an interestingly different meaning to him with his past, while Caesar attempts to contact his parents to try and find a new path after failing so badly in the past. This different version of what we know works well as Taylor died here and Caesar tries to draw his parents in with the truth, but we also get Zaius dealing with visions of the third film and nuclear destruction, something that he’s now trying to investigate because it’s impacted him so. It’s just so all over the map yet so interesting that I don’t know where to go with it.
In Summary:
This series continues to deliver for me just in bringing so many different things to the table and with such passion and craziness that it’s almost delirious. This installment is getting everything into place for the finale and it operates a breakneck pace that keeps you from feeling fully invested in it yet totally on board for the concepts and the very fun visuals. Dagnino has so much ground to cover here and brings new life to familiar and iconic moments that I wish we did have a couple dozen issues for this to unfold with so that we get give it the emotional weight it needs to earn on its own. It’s definitely a fun and wild ride that I can’t help but to recommend wholeheartedly.
Grade: B+
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: Dark Horse Comics, BOOM Studios
Release Date: December 28th, 2016
MSRP: $3.99