The final push!
Creative Staff:
Story: B. Clay Moore
Art: Clayton Henry, Lewis Larosa
Colors: Brian Reber
Letterer: Dave Lanphear of A Larger World
What They Say:
When all hope seems lost, the final threads tethering the Sauvage family to their humanity will finally be severed. Just as the beasts within begin to take hold, the final revelation about the prehistoric island that has claimed them will finally stand revealed. But will this twist of fate offer a last chance at rescue…or forever seal their doom?
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
Over the course of its run, Savage have been a very fun book with what it wants to do. While some of the back and forth aspects of the timeline were problematic and I think it’d actually work better in a more linear sense, the series delivered a solid origin story for the character with plenty of room to grow from. And this series certainly has that potential as it’s all about launching him into the greater world as it closes with the nod that there will be more. I actually appreciate this style more than an ongoing series as it allows for smaller tales to be told without the pressures of a monthly or committing to an ongoing. Valiant has some solid books but I’m still the type that prefers their “fringe” works than the bigger and more connected works.
Because of how the origin story path has been working out, this installment is mostly focused on the here and now. Kev has survived much over the years and the loss of his mother has refocused him in a new way. Seeing how he’s drawing the curtain on his life on this island, bringing things to a close and putting it behind him with some finality, it definitely works in all the right ways to push him forward without anything holding him back. The men in the area that have dominated and killed are still too ill-defined for my tastes but I’m hopeful that it’ll all be figured out and explored eventually so we understand the how and why of it all with the portal. But it did provide for something simple and “magical” for Kev to have to deal with and providing him with the supposed out, even if the head bad guy tells him that nobody ever comes back from the nothingness on the other side.
What we mostly get with this installment is action in addition to the closure and it’s solid. Seeing how things work in the camp makes sense as it’s all about strength and power while jockeying for position. Kev takes easy advantage of that by setting things in motion to draw them out so that he can eliminate as many of them as possible while making his run for the portal. It’s something that really does work well when it comes to the way he sets the trap using the dinosaurs as it reinforces his connection to understanding how this island works as opposed to trying to dominate it. It’s a kind of poetic justice in its own way and the art team work wonderfully here with all the dinosaur related material again to create something that has a real sense of power and intensity about it as Kev’s frantic push to make it through unfolds.
In Summary:
The opening salvo for the Savage character delivered exactly what I wanted. It’s a self-contained origin that has a lot more to be explored but wasn’t focused solely on the lead character. That it spent as much time as it did on his parents early on was great as it set the stage well and makes for a strong reconnect to the real world at the end. Moore did a solid job in bringing the story to life through the scripts but it was Henry and Larosa that took it to a whole other level, especially with the strong dinosaur elements that had such a sense of wonder and enjoyment about them that it was positively infectious. I’m curious to see where it goes next, even if I was hoping for more island adventures first before dropping him into the real world.
Grade: B+
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: Valiant Entertainment
Release Date: February 15th, 2017
MSRP: $3.99
