Review – Fear Agent #32 by Dark Horse Comics

Guest Post by Matt Heerdt

Well.

Well, well, well.

Reviewing a comic like Fear Agent #32 – part five of the five-part Out of Step story arch -  isn’t exactly easy. We Geekcentrists have an anti-spoiler policy and the book itself has a “Don’t read this if you haven’t read the first four” box on the first page. And boy, they’re not kidding, reading this issue of Fear Agent out of turn or at random would be a poor decision on your part; you’d be missing out on a great story. You should be ashamed.

But that does leave me with a problem: how to give you a proper review of a book that I can’t exactly talk about without ruining it?

I could write a haiku:

Fear Agent part five

The end of a space-Texan

Is not what you think

Maybe a crappy quatrain (using the ABAB method):

An angry space-Texan finds an end

Jellybrains give a turn of the knife

Alien monster with a message to send

Rocketship, whiskey, a long-lost life

I could review parts of the creative team on this issue of Fear Agent…

Writing: Rick Remender. http://www.rickremender.com. He’s worked on a ton of great titles, including top-tier titles like The Man with the Screaming Brain and XXXombies.

Pencils: Mike Hawthorne http://www.mikehawthorneart.com/art/default.asp (killer Conan art on that site, check it out!) and Tony Moore http://tonymooreillustration.com/ The Walking Dead.

‘Nuff said.

Alright, alright, I’ll make a serious attempt at a review without giving much away.

Fear Agent #32 is the product of a creative team that knows what their craft and absolutely understands how to make a great comic. To say that the main character, Heath Huston, has had a tough going of it — and by “it” I mean life — would be an understatement, and here he is at the close with one final gut punch.

But it’s not all bad — he doesn’t go out damning the universe or anything. In fact, he’s an old soldier given a pretty good send off. A lot of the things that went wrong in his life at the hands of the invading aliens gets rectified, though not in any way you’d expect.

So I’m left here trying to sum up my thoughts of an issue that sums up a story arc that — we’re told, but hey this is comics you never know — sums up the series. I guess I’ll do it by saying that if the series were to continue, and I had to decide if I’d stick with it based upon this one issue, I’d definitely do so.

Departing trivia: Rick Remender worked on Black Heart Billy from AiT/Planetlar. Back in college my wife drew a big portrait of Billy. Small world.