djetter0801's Animal Man #18 - Rotworld: The Red Kingdom, Epilogue review

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    CAn we finally be done with Rotworld?

    "Epilogue"

    Yea, this comic is supposed to be an "epilogue." I think they used the wrong word and should have gone with "finale-for realz!."

    There is a whole mix of stuff in here that is just going to drive me off the book. Something went very wrong somewhere down the line and the book lost some focus.

    We start off with a general reset of everything back to pre-Rotworld set up, just as predicted. Then, in a moment that just made me wonder why this hasn't happened before, Maxine suddenly stands up to the Rot and takes all of the rot out of them and restores them to what they were before the rot. Not too shabby, and I liked the idea, but why hasn't something like this been done before? And doesn't that just seem a little convenient to have her discover that power at this time?

    Throughout all of this, Ellen Baker hasn't grown as a character. She doesn't like all this superhero stuff, and still doesn't at the end. She really hasn't grown at all in all 18 issues. And the ending of the book, featuring the death of a title character's son again for the second week in a row, will just push her even more away from Buddy.

    Animal Man has felt more like a Fantastic Four type of book, with a strong sense of family. There were a couple of things going against this book - Rotworld and artist changes. We had to pull back from the family focus that I enjoyed the first few issues, to bring in elements of Rotworld into play that just drug this book down. I don't know if Lemire has to adjust his story to match Snyder's story beats in Swamp Thing or vice versa, but this whole Rotworld thing should have ended after 12 issues. Travel Foreman's absence on art duties also took away from the strong, unique visual sense that this book had with it. Granted, Pugh's art hasn't been terrible or even mediocre, but it has just been there. Compared to how the book was started, it just makes me long for those issues to come back.

    The cover for this issue did pay homage to a classic Flash cover. I believe it was Flash #76, where Wally's world turned upside down as well.

    My hope is that we can just move forward and forget this mess ever happened. Let's deal with the fallout of the death but then let's get this book back to doing some good. There is so many places for this book to go, I really want to see them happen sometime soon, or I'm gone.

    Grades

    Words: 6/10

    Pictures: 6/10

    General Feeling After Reading: Sigh of relief that this is over with.

    Buy Next Issue: Will give it two issues to define itself again in a post-Rotworld world, and then go from there.

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