Irredeemable #34
Written by: Mark Waid
Art by: Diego Barreto & Damina Couceiro
Colored by Nolan Woodard
Lettered by: Ed Dukeshire
Published by: Boom! Studios
Cover Price: $3.99
Note : This review is for the digital version of the comic available from Comixology.
Warning! This review contains quite a few spoilers!
Summary (contains spoilers): This issue starts with Qubit explaining how he was able to escape being trapped on the prison planet. This scene is really clever with Qubit enhancing the powers of the traumatized time traveler Mallus in order to pull his future selves in to assist him in building a portal home. When he arrived home, he saw what was going on and realized that the government’s projections were wrong. Unleashing Plutonian’s parents wasn’t just going to kill a third of the population of the world, it was likely going to kill everyone on the planet.
He gathered Max Damage and sought out Plutonian, offering him a chance at redemption. Plutonian could use Mallus’s powers to go into the past and fix everything that has happened, even becoming a hero again. In order to win Plutonian’s trust, Qubit starts to show Plutonian how to use his powers to their fullest.
Max realizes that Qubit has betrayed him, and isn’t too happy about this; he decides to head back to his sanctuary in Coalville.
Meanwhile, the surviving (and in one case, already dead) members of Plutonian’s team, the Paradigm, have gone looking for seeds from the Tree of Live for when Qubit’s plan inevitably fails. We hadn’t seen these guys in a few issues, so it was nice to touch base, but to be honest, it was never really clear what they were trying to do here.
Plutonian’s lessons from Qubit are starting to tremendously increase his power. He’s able to even create antennas to try and absorb all the radiation, though he does so by destroying many of Earth’s great works:
These antennas fail. Qubit realizes that the only person still alive who knows how this radiation works is Plutonian’s old enemy Modeus. Plutonian at first thinks that Modeus has been left behind on the prison planet, but realizes that he must have telepathically caught a ride to Earth when Plutonian and his crew escaped. He flies off to try and stop Modeus before he can cause more harm.
Qubit meanwhile reveals to the reader that his plans are far more sinister than he has been letting on, and that he plans to betray Plutonian and end his threat once and for all. He also knows that it will not be possible to use Mallus to send Plutonian back in time, because Mallus is dead.
Review: One thing that drives me nuts about Irredeemable is that sometimes the ends of the issues aren’t particularly clear, and I find myself having to wait for the recap in the next issue to understand what I had just seen. This happened again with this issue. The last issue ends with Plutonian’s parents sending him…someplace as punishment for his actions:
I wasn’t sure if it was underwater, the deepest reaches of space, or what I was looking at. It wasn’t until I read issue 34’s recap that they cleared it up, they imprisoned him at the end of time. I had no way of knowing that just from those pages alone. It seems like that kind of thing could be cleared up with a quick bit of narration and dialogue.
The best parts of this issue were seeing Qubit’s plans to help Plutonian expand his powers. You can’t help but cringe and know that this won’t end well, just like every other plan the Paradigm have tried through the series to stop Plutonian. I really hope that the series doesn’t end with a quicky time travel reset with every one living happily ever after. It would just seem to contradict everything that Waid had been setting up.
Actually, the only way I can see this working is that if this entire series ends up “Newhart’d” and we find out that it’s all some kind of scenario that Hornet is playing out in his head in case Toni did end up going rogue. But again, that would make for a pretty unsatisfying ending too.
I did like that we caught up with all the characters and storylines that had been on the backburner the last few issues while we explored Plutonian’s origin. In a lot of ways, Plutonian is the least important character of the series to me as we watch his former friends, allies, and enemies deal with the fall out of the world’s greatest hero gone mad.
I do have to say that I thought Max saying “Screw you guys, I’m going home” fit the character perfectly, but it felt a little unsatisfying, especially after the crossover where we found out how closely these two characters are tied together. Actually, there was quite a bit unsatisfying about this issue. Which isn’t the same as bad, just didn’t quite feel like I was getting everything out of this issue I had hoped for.
Honestly, I wish Waid hadn’t make his announcement about Irredeemable ending soon. I really couldn’t help but look at this issue from the context of “is this setting up a satisfying ending?” and I think I would have enjoyed it much more if I read it just like “another issue of a series I really enjoy.” The art and writing on this issue were great, just as they always are in Irredeemable. It has been one hell of a roller coaster series, and I really can’t wait to see where it takes us next. Yeah, the ride is almost over, but it’s still one of the best comics out there.
Final Score: 8.0 – Another solid issue of this always great series. Not sure if its setting up for a particularly satisfying ending, but it’s probably too soon to judge.
