Review: Extermination #8
Published by Boom! Studios
Written by Simon Spurrier
Art by V Ken Marion
Coloured by Michael Garland
The Plot
This issue begins with Nox and Red Reaper discussing the actions that lead to the current world crisis. Nox continues to move ahead with his plan to sacrifice Reaper; however, he is fooled and injured as a result. Reaper then persuades Nox to switch places and sacrifice himself in order to bring Absolute back. Before going in, Reaper discovers that Nox had devised the same plan in order to deal with Absolute. Absolute is reawakened and dispatches of most of the Edda while closing their portal ensuring that their numbers cannot be replenished. Reaper then utilizes Mordium (Absolute’s kryptonite and derived from the Synthesist’s hand) to weaken and eventually kill Absolute. He then harnesses the Synthesist’s hand and happily accepts his role as the world’s saviour. End of series.
The Breakdown
The Red Reaper has plans for everything and he was one of the consistently bright spots in this series. From pretending to be gay to acting naive, he was working everyone all along. He’s a supervillain and Nox’s fall from grace didn’t change that (even though Reaper was seeming more like a good guy in comparison to him). I wasn’t sure what Absolute could bring to the table and it turned out that the hype was warranted. His dispatching of the Edda was quick and brutal. Marion’s art was the best part of this issue. His work was a great improvement when he took over this series. I’ll gladly check out more of his work in the future. Garland’s colours also did a good job at providing Marion’s art with some depth. Overall, I did enjoy this series.
BUT…
So we see Absolute for the first time and he goes into full blown Superman rip-off mode. I always thought of him as a Superman-like character and not…well, the heat vision was a little too much. So Nox gains a great amount of intelligence yet he ignores his common sense that he gained as a hero and gets taken out a little too easily. Even with Reaper’s exposition happening during the events it still didn’t seem likely. Also, why didn’t Reaper launch into his planned manipulative speech before he injured Nox? It just seemed like a reason for him to “show up” Nox and it didn’t seem necessary to the course of action. I’m pretty sure this series was a cancellation and this really hurt this series. On the one hand, the team was given the chance to wrap up the story. On the other, everything went bang, bang without the chance for anything to really sink in. Perhaps the ending of the series could have been changed because the one presented didn’t actually fit so well. Everything lacked emotional weight and nothing really sunk in. The cover lead to more disappointment because I thought that we would be treated to one more showdown between Nox and Absolute since they had nothing but unfinished business. The confrontation between Absolute and Reaper was anticlimactic as well. I didn’t have an issue with the actual ending and had the build up been allowed the proper amount of time to grow it would’ve been a really good one. There were just too many twists and turns in the last few issues that it resembled more like booking on the fly rather than patiently crafted storytelling.
Buy It, Borrow It, Shelf Read It, or Ignore It?
Ignore It. Unfortunately, this book became pretty inconsequential. It is unfortunate because this series was one that I really enjoyed just a few months ago. I believe that this series was the victim of the sales game, which led to its cancellation. The reason why I believe this is because the pacing and storyline became quite erratic a few issues ago. Also, eight issues is an odd number for either an ongoing or a mini-series. The concept was a good one and it’s unfortunate that it couldn’t have had longer to play out.
