“Star Seed, Part 3″
Creative Staff:
Story: Jeff Lemire
Art: Dustin Nguyen
Letterer: Steve Wands
What They Say:
PENULTIMATE ISSUE! Mila takes a pivotal step forward as magical blows are traded on Dirishu-6, where our heroes find themselves surrounded on all fronts.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
The return of the series and going into a big arc quickly was definitely welcome even if it took a little bit for a full reconnect. Jeff Lemire takes things to a really great place in this penultimate installment with a lot of big moments hitting after a long time and all the emotion that comes from that. Thankfully, everything is firing on all cylinders as Dustin Nguyen’s artwork is as great as it is, it’s still relatively easy to get back into the groove of things and just enjoy the experience. I really like the creativity of this world in general and building off Descender in a new way like Ascender has definitely worked for me.
With one more issue left after this, everything has moved quickly to this point where things are hitting those big moments. A decent chunk of the book focuses on the battle between TIM-21 and Mother as they both weave magic at each other. For Mother, she’s taking some hits but she also knows that he can have only so much magic whereas she was born in it and is truly one with it. The back and forth is quite good as they do fight, with Mother gaining the upper hand and really pushing back hard on TIM-21, and seeing him nearly broken is heartbreaking. But this ties into the story with Andy as he and Effie have pushed hard to get away from Sampson to be here, and they arrive just as TIM-21 is calling down on some help from above in a huge and dangerous way.
With Mila and her group, they’re on the run on the planet as well as the scrappers are chasing them. It’s a fun little sequence at first as they try to find a place, following Mila who is following Bandit, but when they run into a dead end it turns into an actual panic. But it’s Mzierd’s magic that helps them at first, putting up a cloaking spell that deals with the enemy fairly easily as they’re visually based and don’t recognize what’s going on. But one of the creatures does and it delivers us a brief if intense action sequence as Mizerd is attacked and falls but we get Mila grabbing his staff and revealing just how much magic potential she’s had in her. It’s a gorgeous panel – especially through guided view – that really stands out and shows what Mila can become and how she can reshape things going forward.
In Summary:
I don’t keep up with all solicitations like I used to so I was surprised to see that the next issue is the last one for the series. It’s unfortunate as I want to keep exploring this place and all these characters, to see what they build out of things after the current events unfold, but bringing it to a close will also be good after several years of engaging stories and a lot of great artwork. This issue hits all the big moments that it needed to and I’m really happy with what we get here across the board with the cast, the magic, and the action. And that least panel tease is a real delight.
Grade: A-
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: Image Comics via ComiXology
Release Date: July 21st, 2021
MSRP: $3.99
