Crushingly Depressing
Irredeemable's Earth has never been in more trouble than the start of this arc. Qubit is stuck on the prison planet, Modeus is missing, Survivor's New Paradigm is useless, and, most importantly, The Plutonian is back. This entire issue is just utter despair. It seems that the calm of The Paradigm's imprisonment was simply preparing Earth for this storm.
Mark Waid does a seriously stand-up job of depressing the hell out of me. I mean, everything is in a seriously bad place and I don't know where it can go from here. It's tough to rate a story as depressing as this one because of how it leaves me as a reader. Sure, Survivor's been a huge jerk, but I don't want him to see his comeuppance this way. Waid does a great job of expressing just how humbling it is to see his house of cards crumble in just two days.
My one real complaint with this story, and Waid in general, is his reliance on hidden information. Twice now we've had Burrows react to something another character thought. He shared that info with Qubit and not Survivor, but in both cases the reader was not privy to the info. I get that this sets up drama, it's just the most tired, trite setup possible. I don't like being kept in the dark in this fashion.
Krause's art remains stellar on the book. We're talking terrible destruction and serious violence here and he delivers without getting too macabre. My favorite thing about his art is the pure evil insanity evident in The Plutonian's face in almost every panel.
Irredeemable remains one of the best comics you're probably not reading. Pick it up if you get the chance, but don't expect to put it down feeling bright and cheery.