Mixing in a dash of hope with a new horror.
Creative Staff:
Story: Tom Taylor
Art: Trevor Hairsine, Gigi Baldassin
Colors: Rain Beredo
Letterer: Said Temofonte
What They Say:
Time is running out for the Justice League to unlock the Anti-Life cure as they face a deadly new threat on Earth-in addition to the billions of the undead! Their final desperate attempt at finding the cure will take them off-planet for the greatest heist in the history of New Genesis!
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
DCeased continues to be a property that just delivers in spades for me in ways of seeing characters not re-imagined but actually progressing forward and showing how they’d cope and deal with issues. It’s what makes this work so strong and why Tom Taylor is the talent that he is. This installment definitely has some fun with that growth aspect and really makes you wish it was sprawling out further than it did by its end. The series has Trevor Hairsine handling the pencils on it with a great team behind him inking and coloring it so that it shows a real richness in design and layouts and captures both the power of the events and the humanity of it as well, whether dealing with Ollie or the last couple of pages and spreads there.
The discovery of a way to reverse the anti-life equation virus definitely has everyone trying their best to make it happen, and that’s initially focused on Constantine managing to bring back Mister Miracle to The Garden and getting him on the team. The idea itself is simple in that to unlock what’s inside him, they need Metron’s chair for Vic to figure it out and that requires a trap to lure him in. Constantine’s got the goods, which is going to come back to haunt him I’m sure, but it requires a team to head to New Genesis first and then on to meet with Metron before attempting to trap him. The New Genesis part is definitely fun as we get Scott being re-introduced to his son Jacob – from afar – as he’s still feeling like he can’t be in his life after losing his mother to the virus. But this chance at fixing that gives him the hope of bringing things back together. There’s a lot to like in how Highfather and Scott talk here, accomplishing a lot in a short amount of time, but it’s never going to amount to much.
We get a small team that heads on this mission, folks that are more space-based, and that means bringing Dinah on board. There’s a really great sequence for this with Mary and Jon going to get her help and it reinforces nicely Jon and Mary’s potential but also to see Dinah able to drop some of the guilt she had from thinking she killed him. There’s also some great time between Damian and Cassie that really works well and has me wanting to see more of all of that. The actual trap as it plays out definitely delivers the goods, especially since it plays to the idea of just talking instead of fighting would have worked better, but everyone is so used to a fight, and the stakes are too high to not try and trap him. Besides, it’s Metron, nobody trusts him, so a trap makes sense.
In Summary:
As with other issues, there’s a lot going on here and all of it is enjoyable. Some of the quips are quick and moved on from too fast, and we shift gears from one set of characters to another in the same way, but it has a light and breezy angle to it that allows it to work because the story is getting the equation. It’s like a baton race, really. I like the configurations that come up as it progresses and the way various characters change in the course of interacting with others. Taylor gets it with these kinds of work and the art team does a fantastic job across the board of capturing both the big moments and the nuance of expression in smaller moments to deliver a thoroughly engaging experience.
Grade: B+
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: DC Comics
Release Date: October 6th, 2020
MSRP: $3.99
