Broken Frontier

Resist gives us a glimpse into the day that evil one and serves as an epilogue for a great series.

Checkmate (Vol. 2) was that rarest of comic books, it was an intelligent book set in the super hero world that did not center around vigilante actions. It was a book about a United Nations Security Council team. The book had a large cast and dealt mostly with political intrigue. It was about a sanctioned spy group. In other words, it played to Queen & Country creator Greg Rucka’s strengths. For the majority of the run, he provided smart entertaining series that kept some of his more passionate fans soothed while waiting for his signature series to have a comeback.

Then he left it and Bruce Jones turned it into an overambitious mess that bared little resemblance to the book that had the same title and numbering. While that end story may have ended the book, it did not destroy the concept. No, that job was left to Rucka. Resist is a Final Crisis tie in that (shock of all shocks) actually is very relevant to the event. It is about how a small group of people comes to resist the anti life equation and maybe, possibly turn the tide of the war for the totality of human control.

In the opening pages, we get to see something that at best, we have only glimpsed in previous books. We get to see the havoc that was code named "Total Defeat" by the remnants of Checkmate. We get to see how it infects and quickly destroys the infrastructure of one of the world’s most elite think tanks. Left are Snapper Carr, Mr. Terrific, Thinker, and Taleb Beni Khalid. They are the totality of the human resistance, that is until they come upon another soul not overtaken by Darkseid’s spell. The alliance they make with that character is shocking, but no where near as unexpected as who Holt turns to be the savior of the human race. There had been hints that a recent baddie would return in Final Crisis, but for it to return as humanity’s last hope was a plot twist I never expected.

The issue really zooms in on Carr and Holt and the way the two deal with the mounting Crisis. There is too much going on to spend quality character building time, but fans of Checkmate won’t need it. It as if Rucka never stopped writing the book and with this epilogue to his solid work, he amps up the explosion and turns what many claimed to be a boring book into the mega action hit of the fall. This is your Die Hard, it is not dumb, but stuff gets blown up good - yippy kay yay!

Along for the ride is artist extraordinaire, Ryan Sook. It is awesome to see interiors by him again. I do not know who the colorist is here, but I assume that Marco Rudy is the inker. He gives Sook that thick line that makes his style pop while bringing it firmly into the DC House style. In fact, Sook may be aping Jones here as his usual pop gleam is not quite as apparent. The dark colors also help this look less like the normal far from the penciller. It is a solid look for the book though, the team comes together to create something separate from what they would have done together and in doing so match the tone of the book. It looks so good that readers may just lick their lips just like a certain villainess does in between the covers.

Surprises aplenty in a solid entry to expound on the basic outline being provided in the main title by Mr. Morrison, Resist fills in some blanks and creates some added excitement for where the event might be going. Like its counterpart, Submit, a couple of weeks back, this one may be more of a required reading book than Final Crisis itself.