It is an ending
My expectations into this Savage arc of DC Presents lead to a bumpy start. I hardly ever look at previews, and my only exposure to Vandal Savage so far is in the fantastic Demon Knights where Vandal is very much the loveable brute of the group. So to say I was taken aback by James Robinson’s Hannibal Lecter/Charles Manson like portrayal of Vandal might be an understatement. That said Vandal’s daughter Kassandra Sage potentially added an extra layer of a Father Daughter relationship that kept my interest. What can I say, I’m a sucker for paternal relationships. Fast forward to the final part of this Savage story and we now have Kassandra captured by a psychopath, and Vandal potentially free from the police.
We start with Kassandra talking to the psychopath and trying to talk him out of turning her and the senator's daughter into paste. We actually get some interesting development of the psychopath, we see how he fits with Vandal Savage, plus there is some comparing and contrasting of Kassandra and the psychopath. That said while reading it I felt that if this was more spread out through the three issues I would of been much more interested in what was being said.
Then There a fight scene. It is a fight scene. It is fairly boring. I think I feel this way because there were fights in the previous two issues. Instead of this fight having some impact it feels like yet another comic book fight scene, when instead this should have been the big fight at the end of the arc.
The final six pages contain way too many words for my liking. Don’t get me wrong I like words, but this is one of those times when the writer really should have let the visuals tell the story, instead James Robinson decides to fall back on having Kassandra and Vandal talk about how they feel in that way that no human being has done before six months of psychiatry.
I think by now you’ve already decided if you like the art or not. I like the look of the book. Colours are appropriately muted and the style of the pencils fits the story overall. I will say the psychopath look stupid. He was appropritely creepy in the first two issues, but here he just looks wrong for this story.
As a single issue the comic is fine. Nothing about the issue was bad, but at the same time it wasn’t spectacular. As a whole however, the Savage story was good and this felt like a fine end to the story and I’d like to see more of Kassandra and this version of her father.
