A brutal end tinged with potential.
Creative Staff:
Story: Frank Tieri
Art: Oleg Okunev
Colors: Rob Schwager
Letterer: Marshall Dillon
What They Say:
This is it! The final confrontation between Roderick Helms & his group and Satan! Will the former members of Fiat Lux be able to stop the Dark Lord and his Black Plague…or will Satan’s demonic forces march upon the Earth forevermore?
Find out in our startling conclusion–and watch as a member of Roderick’s team makes the ultimate sacrifice.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
Pestilence: A Story of Satan draws to a close with this installment and that has Frank Tieri working events with some scale and some personal elements that drives it well. I’ve enjoyed Tieri’s work a lot over the last few years with the twists and directions that he takes and it lands well here. It’s also a fantastic pairing with Oleg Okunev as he brought this series to life, death, and life again in some really great ways. I love the detail that he brings to their expressions and the action but also just the design in making it feel as messy and unkempt as it should be. Which Rob Schwager makes even more engaging with some strong color design that gives it that rich earthy feeling throughout.
With Satan as the Pope orchestrating quite the event and having set up for the revived to strike, much of Europe is under fire with the battles that erupt. I dislike the nod toward this being the civilized world but it’s being written in Roderick’s voice and that’s his take on things. The montage early on is solid with how it presents the various countries that are dealing with all of this before it focuses on Roderick and the pursuit of the group that kidnapped Abel. This lets Roderick show off just how intense and angry he is which when combined with dealing with the undead means he’s just slicing and dicing through them once they’re no longer useful. You see the concern in everyone else’s faces as you’d expect but they also know not to try and get in front of him and his blade.
The push to save their son is naturally strong and it’s only Jaqueline that can get through to Roderick. It’s a very small and personal piece amid all the chaos ravaging the continent and it works well as she uses this to get him to take some downtime so she can sneak off and go after the Pope. It really does make sense since so many men simply don’t register women in their view and seeing how the culmination of all this plays out with Jaqueline altering the course of it all is really enjoyable. I feared that Roderik might show at the last minute to bring things to a close but Tieri has her in the driver’s seat and she hits all the right notes. The fallout from it is intense, both there and across the land since all those under the Pope’s sway fall, and it sets us up for another series because Satan never rests. What it does here is change things once again as it did with the previous series and it opens up to a whole new world for next time if there’s more.
In Summary:
Part of me feels like there needed to be one more issue to this series so that we could have had more brutality showcased across Europe and more time seeing what Jaqueline was up to in sneaking in and who she had to tke down to get there. What we do get is a good bit of fun as we see Roderik in intense pursuit and seeing just how big the Pope’s plans were with all that he had converted and controlled. Jaqueline won me over in previous appearances but it’s here that she’s in top form and handling things which made for a nice surprise. Tieri keeps things moving really well throughout this with some solid dialogue in the mix while Okunev delivered strong layouts and designs in this issue just like all the rest. I hope there’s more to come with this down the line as there’s plenty of other attempts to explore I’m sure.
Grade: B+
Age Rating: 17+
Released By: AfterShock Comics
Release Date: November 21st, 2018
MSRP: $3.99
