The non-surprising twist!
Creative Staff:
Story: Jed MacKay
Art: Marcelo Ferreira, Roberto Poggi
Colors: Jana Cartaglia
Letterer: VC’s Cory Petit
What They Say:
BACK FROM THE DEAD! Dead heroes and villains alike have been reanimated as ghoulish versions of their past selves. Now it’s up to Strange and the Harvestman to make sure these dead supers stay dead! But what happens when the next reanimated hero is Clea’s dead husband: Stephen Strange?!
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
With only about two or three weeks between issues, that’s definitely better than the couple of months we had between other issues but it just reminds you of how unreliable schedules are with books like this these days. Thankfully, it’s operating with a pretty simplistic storyline so far, making it easy to reconnect with. The opening issues did a solid job of introducing the core basics and making it clear who this version of Clea is and I really think Jed MacKay hit it out of the park in setting the tone and establishing the basics. MacKay is joined by artists Marcel Ferreira and Roberto Poggi while Jana Cartaglia handles the color design. It’s a solid-looking book that has some really great expressiveness elements to it and a strong sense of design and power that a title like this really needs.
Clea’s attempts at figuring out what’s going on haven’t exactly been smooth because it’s partially due to her not taking a lot of things in the human world as seriously as she should. The arrival of her mother has complicated things but it has given her a chance to just talk with the Harvestman for a bit about what’s going on. That it comes down to them being a kind of avatar of sorts for Death in dealing with what’s going on makes a certain kind of sense because there are problems in the afterlife or whatever realm they’re calling it these days with the people there making their way back. It’s not a clean thing though since so many have been dead for so long and the result is that they’re not there mentally. We do see those who were heroes or villains having more of an identity to latch onto because of their symbols, hence what we’ve seen so far and notably with Randall.
And that does have Clean visiting Mr. Knight in order to see what she can learn there as he’s died many times. Knight is certainly fun to watch here as he assists in a kind of low key way with her, going through some of his rounds first to highlight how he operates, and he does feel like he owes her for taking care of Randall once again. This does lead them to a group that’s been kidnapping people as Clea tries to figure out the connections going on with the Blasphemy group and all, but it’s kind of loose and not exactly all that interesting. The action is basic but nicely illustrated and it’s simply fun to watch Clea and Moon Knight together, even if some of the artwork involving her chest is just done in a really awful way. All of it is just leading to those final pages with the expected reveal of who the Harvestman is as they deal with Death but it does leave me curious as to how long they’ll let this play out.
In Summary:
Having not kept up on the recent Moon Knight work, it was definitely a fun crossover to have here and a fairly natural one after the events of the previous issue. I do like the confrontation that we get with Clea and the Harvestman and you certainly want to go back and re-examine previous issues with him now that we know their identity and how it reshapes conversations. The use of Death is always a little dicey in books like this to begin with – it’s such an impermanent fixture – but it’s something that does work when playing with the Sorcerer Supreme characters and what they’re involved with. Definitely need more time with Clea’s mom tho.
Grade: B+
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: Marvel Comics
Release Date: August 17th, 2022
MSRP: $3.99
