“Risk vs. Reward”
Creative Staff:
Story: Cullen Bunn, Heath Amodio
Art: Sami Kivela
Colors: Jason Wordie
Letterer: Simon Bowland
What They Say:
With Bumpy and Sofia captured, Billy and Shih dead (again), and Lucky all alone, will the Heathens bring down the Ripper or face Stalin’s wrath?
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
AfterShock’s latest project draws to a close here as Cullen Bunn and Heath Amodio set things up with the kind of closure it needs but also making sure it can be easily revisited for more if there’s enough interest someday. With Sami Kivela handling the art duties, it’s a good team that’s come together that’s made better with Jason Wordie’s colorwork and the result is a book that plays in a familiar field but with some really nice execution and style to it. Bunn and Amodio deal with the stories of these historical characters effortlessly here so that we know the deal and who everyone is by name and pushes us right into things. Kivela’s artwork is really good here, covering a number of periods and designs for the cast, and the layouts keep it moving fast and in an engaging way.
Things have built well to this point but it is kind of awkward in a way because of how the group has been separated. That means little in the way of a full-on team effort to bring things to a close and that kind of takes some of the wind out of the sails, even if it is more realistic. We get Sofia as she’s being cut up and tortured to death for practice in this school of the Ripper but she manages to talk her way out of it in a comical way, which results in Bump arriving there to see that along with Lucky. Those two had faced off against the Ripper in the sewer and discovered them to be a she but that’s not something they get to deal with. Rescuing Sofia is where their focus was and with the building on fire they’re mostly looking to just get her out along with the kids, even if they are in training to become future killers. It’s a weird situation in general.
While that unfolds, we get Shih making her confrontation with Stalin about how the promise that was made isn’t worth anything. With her having gone through the land of the dead and understanding what it really means, she’s intent on having words at least with Stalin but he claims honesty about his offer, which results in her getting a chance to go after the Ripper again. That’s set up off-page as we get Sofia and the rest coming across the end result of that final fight, though we do get to see a bit of it. It’s something that says a lot for Shih as we see how she’s being given her reward overall but it also comes with the reveal at the end that, like most things with Stalin, the truth isn’t what you think it is and that he was probably far too literal in what he was saying for people to get. There are a lot of decent little montage bits as Stalin tries to set things to draw on these characters in the future but that just reinforced how separate everyone was and the kind of soft landing that the ending has overall.
In Summary:
I liked The Heathens in concept and I liked Sami Kivela’s artwork as they worked to bring in some very different time periods and characters together. It took an odd turn with the dead-space that Shih found herself in and that kind of slowed down the energy of the book. Splitting the team may be realistic when you get down to how something like this would really work but it also made the finale feel like we didn’t need most of the cast and it should have just been focused in Shih herself. It has things that are definitely done well across the board and it has potential but there are simply some choices that left me feeling like it undercut itself. It may read better in collected form than weekly as well, which is a consideration for new readers going forward.
Grade: B-
Age Rating: 15+
Released By: AfterShock Comics
Release Date: March 30th, 2022
MSRP: $3.99
