“The Weight of Sorrow’s Gravity”
Creative Staff:
Story: Christopher Cantwell
Art: Adam Gorham
Colors: Kurt Michael Russell
Letterer: Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou
What They Say:
The Blue Flame presents his opening argument to the Tribunal Consensus, finally beginning to make his case for the salvation of humanity by leading a hyper-visual tour of its beautiful accomplishments. But at home in Milwaukee, Sam Brausam is still dealing with extensive PTSD and becomes volatile in the house. With a baby well on the way, his sister Dee demands he go to a tragedy support group and seek help or move out. As the defense makes its counter opening argument, Sam faces prying and morbid curiosity from his new group therapy peers, leading him to seek solace with Reed Gordon again-but she may be unwilling to offer any, given her own dark and tragic past.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
With a couple of months between issues on top of being a book that has interesting ideas but wasn’t quite keeping me connected because of the way it shifted gears often enough, getting back into the series with this issue took a few pages. I keep wanting to get to the meat of things when it comes to the trial and to dig into more of the big concept ideas. Cantwell knows what he’s doing through and definitely keeps you coming back for more with each tease. Adam Gorham made a lot of it really fun as well, with the creativity of the outer space sequences with all that we encounter there, to the more humdrum mundane material of Sam, but especially his time with the therapist this time around that really works well. The expressiveness of the cast is what’s key in this installment, however, and Gorham delivers on that quite well.
The earthly storyline here is one that works surprisingly well and mostly because we’ve seen Sam at his worst. He’s falling apart and Dee is ready to toss him out, and rightly so with how he’s acting and with her due in a few weeks. But Mateo manages to get Sam to a group meeting to start talking things out, which doesn’t go well either. But it is the start that gets his mind trying to make changes here and we see him retaking control of his life. Asking Reed out on a date that very night may not be the smartest thing in reality, but the two together after he puts the effort in to get cleaned up has some good reveals on both sides as they talk things out and open up in a way that neither has likely done in some time. Just getting him on the right track once again here is huge.
In terms of the galactic trial, that does play out in an interesting way and allows Gorham a chance to do some variety to things. With the opening phase for Sam, he spends his time talking about love, wisdom, research, curiosity, and all the things that make people who they are and a nod to Christ as well in religion bringing things forward. Of course, the counter is that the aliens have been watching all this time and while not shown to us, shows what went on in the past with the real Christ and how his followers for centuries afterward killed in his name. It’s a familiar choice but it works well in this context as in other presentations before. We even get some time after the first day of this where he and the prosecutor, who shot down most of his arguments, spend some time together drinking and in his own way he prods Sam toward understanding how to better his defense – at the expense of his existing defense. It definitely works in setting things up and is an engaging read here.
In Summary:
Blue Flame continues to be an interesting series but I’m more interested in it now as we see Sam trying to reconcile with the past in regards to the Night Brigade and their deaths while also delving into the actual trial side of things in space. Both present familiar elements and tie together well while being their own thing, which gives Gorham a whole lot to play with here visually, both in layouts and the actual design elements. It’s a lot of fun and it’s a good emotional layer to it as we get things out of both Sam and Reed that really humanizes them wonderfully. I’m curious to see how it’s all going to go by the end but it continues to be a solid journey.
Grade: B+
Age Rating: 16+
Released By: Vault Comics
Release Date: November 3rd, 2021
MSRP: $3.99
