What if the world was ending and people were in denial about that?
Creative Staff:
Story: Marc Guggenheim
Art: Eduardo Ferigato
Colors: Marcelo Costa
Letterer: Diego Sanches
What They Say:
With Earth rendered uninhabitable, humanity has chosen to evacuate to the stars. But with just twenty-four hours left until the last ark, designed to evacuate Earth’s residents, leaves forever, its designer’s estranged daughter goes missing. Marc Guggenheim (Arrow, X-Men) and Eduardo Ferigato (Self/Made) tell the story of an absentee father trying to make amends with his daughter during the end of the world.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
With an easy sell concept that grabs me combined with a great cover, Last Flight Out has been on the list of anticipated titles for me. I’ve read a fair bit of Marc Guggenheim’s comic work over the years and have liked what I’ve seen of his TV writing as well, so I was curious to see how something original would go. It definitely hits the right notes here even if my mind is mentally viewing it as storyboards for a feature or something. The comic definitely sets the right tone for me from the start and there’s a lot of appeal with the strong artwork from Eduardo Ferigato as he captures the near-future elements well while also ensuring that the humanity of the situations and the cast figures large. It’s a very human story set against a terrifying backdrop.
The premise for this takes place in 2055 but it starts in 2031 with the birth of a child, Sarah. Her father is a leading inventor/tech type who is never fully there for his family and even misses the birth of his daughter because of it. Four years later, his wife and daughter end up in a car accident, a sequence in which learns about it being truly brutal, and that creates an even greater rift between father and daughter. One where, in 2055, as the final ark ship is getting ready to leave Earth in twenty-four hours, she’s halfway across the world in the hellhole of Chicago and unable to be reached. Yet her father, Ben, is insistent that they get her and he ends up on a wild helicopter ride with a small military extraction crew to get her, facing all sorts of climate challenges along the way that has brought the world to ruin.
Guggenheim does a lot of world setting in this first issue so that we know our main character of Ben, and we see his daughter as a child but not as an adult, so the focus is on him and the rescue. But we also get a lot of nods through welcome creative choices to showcase how the world is operating in trying to save as many people getting them off-world before things reach a tipping point. If this window is missed, it’ll be nearly seventy years before a new one opens. Which would basically doom all those on the ship. So it’s not going to wait for Ben, which adds a lot of pressure. But the book also ensures that we have a more modern take on how the world reacts, which a lot of us were expecting after the arrival of COVID-19. It’s disheartening in a way to hear the same denials here, hoaxes, and so forth, but it just adds to the believability of those who intend to stay behind and the way everything has fallen apart.
In Summary:
With the mission just getting underway, there’s not a lot of story here but there’s a good amount of character material put into play and worldbuilding. A lot of us are in a weird place where we enjoy these kinds of stories but we’re also now starting to really live them in our actual lives and that makes a weird disconnect here. Guggenheim is working with some broad and familiar strokes but it’s well-executed and definitely looks great with the visual design of it all. It touches on a lot of real-world extrapolations from our current situation, which who knows how it’ll be in thirty years, but as a reflection of now into the future, it fits right and will unnerve those that take it seriously. I’m really curious to see where else it goes here, if we get to see anything of the other ark ships and destination, or if it’ll just be a pure rescue mission set against climate calamity. But it’s off to a strong start.
Grade: A-
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: Dark Horse Comics
Release Date: September 8th, 2021
MSRP: $3.99
