All debts must be paid.
Creative Staff:
Story: Zack Kaplan
Art: Piotr Kowalski
Colors: Brad Simpson
Lettering: Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou
What They Say:
The Future. A high noon showdown between country vs city, independence vs technology, and individual vs society. Clementine is the sole remaining resident of Franklin, and the only thing standing in the way of its decimation. Armed only with a revolver, her wits and her unwavering willpower, she will have to draw against the futuristic lawmen of the region. Will she finally get her revenge or die in heroic glory?
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
Join the Future draws to a close with this installment, though it has plenty of room open for more – hopefully if it does well in the trade collections. Zack Kaplan has a lot of fun giving us basically an old west storyline in the future here and while there’s plenty of familiarities with it, it’s well-executed both in style and dialogue. Piotr Kowalski has been a favorite of mine for a long time and he was great on this project in bringing it to life, especially with Brad Simpson’s work on the earth tones that dominates this. I do wish we had seen more of the city from both of them just to get more contrast, but it’s definitely well-focused on the natural world here and the pair did a fantastic job with it.
Watching Clementine’s journey since the start of this with the loss of her father, it’s definitely been good to see her taking more firm control of everything and really settling in on what she wants her path to be. The result is someone who is determined and cannot be deterred from what she intends to do. Which is something the sheriff and the suit from the city just can’t understand. When they roll into Franklin to deal with her as the machines are closing in, they’re quickly realizing that it’s not going to be as easy as they hoped. The proximity of the massive machines alone means that it’s throwing a lot of interference into the air and with networked weapons, well, they’re quite unreliable compared to more practical weapons. It also doesn’t help that Clementine has gone and set up some delightful traps. While they won’t stop things from happening it does put a real spanner in the works.
Of course, as good as she does things here, Clementine can get only so far because just enough tech works and her plan to eliminate them goes awry – not that others wouldn’t show up nor can she stop the machines. But it’s the principle of the thing, which helps as the Trader shows up to pay his own debt and join the fight after staying away for so long. The finale is pretty open-ended here as I expected it would be but it unfolds well as we see Clementine dealing with the sheriff and others as she believes they needed to be for what they did at the start and to her town. She’s not full of emotion over it nor is she cold as steel about it. But she is determined and it definitely works right, allowing for the grief to be passed on through the Trader more than anything else. But we also see her realizing that she has no real stake in life until she clears the slate entirely, which sets her on a path to the city that I hope we see someday.
In Summary:
While I do wish that the series had more installments going forward and that this wasn’t tagged as the end, it’s a complete enough story for this cycle that it works well enough. I’ll hold out hope for more but I’ll also feel largely sated by what we get here because it was executed as well as it was – even if it was a bit of a rougher ride to keep up with because of the pandemic. The writing is solid with good characterization coming in for Clementine and I loved the earthy look of everything both in the illustration of it and the color design. It’s a familiar tale but this spin on it worked well and leaves me wanting more.
Grade: B+
Age Rating: 15+
Released By: AfterShock Comics
Release Date: August 12th, 2020
MSRP: $3.99
