Broken Frontier

It’s the end of the line for The Losers. Who, if anyone, makes it out alive?

With a name like The Losers, Clay, Aisha, Cougar, Pooch, and Jensen were doomed from the start. And now, as their payback tour of the world comes to its final act aboard an oil rig/micro-nation, the price of lining CIA-spawn madman Max up in their sights has been high. Already Clay has been burned alive while taking out Max’s twin, Aisha has turned on the team, and Cougar is gravely injured. That leaves Jensen and Pooch, with agent Stegler pulling strings for them from Qatar. With barely a team left, can the remaining Losers stop Max from detonating a nuclear weapon in Washington, DC?

The Losers jumped the shark when Max was revealed. Before Max, The Losers had edge, smarts, a genuine thrill factor, and more testosterone than Jose Canseco’s medicine cabinet. Every month Andy Diggle and Jock brought readers the best action movie on paper. But while The Losers had a dedicated following, its fans knew that the title was built for the sprint, not the marathon. And yet, though we knew that Clay and company couldn’t chase Max forever, I don’t think we expected that the post-Max Losers would become so lackluster. The Losers lost its mystery, then its intensity, and replaced both, sadly, with varying levels of farce. Max himself looking like Clark Gable with The Joker’s fashion sense. Clay and Aisha falling into a relationship that didn’t make much sense. Such a great, ballsy character like Clay shuffled off this mortal coil as if he were a bit player. Aisha’s betrayal, which was more curious than shocking, and had little dramatic impact on the final chapters. Max revealed to be twins. And—my God—Cougar speaking and showing his eyes. So, given the direction The Losers has taken for the last dozen issues or so, it’s no surprise that the final issue feels like it’s come a year too late.

Diggle’s script reads like it was written on autopilot, or perhaps a car that’s driven 200 miles in the wrong direction but keeps going in hopes that it will find its destination eventually. The story is technically sound, however. The hard scene cuts and tight pacing are there. And there’s even a little of the old flair the title once had coming through when Cougar commits his final act of bravery and Aisha makes what may or may not be a last stand. Still, the plot is straightforward and predictable, with none of the twists or double-switches of earlier storyarcs. Consequently, what should be a rousing send-off has an exhausted feel about it. I wanted to root for the good guys in this one, but by the end I found that I really didn’t care anymore, perhaps unconsciously believing that by this point Diggle had stopped caring as well.

Still, however disappointing The Losers has become, Diggle’s script still gives Jock plenty of high-impact scenes to illustrate. That’s a good thing, as Jock—one of the finest comics artists of his generation—is as on his game in this last issue as he was in the very first. His line work is scratchy, edgy, and frenetic, like he’s drawing for his life and can’t wait to get to the next panel. Emotionally, his images run the gamut. While the final images of Cougar are poignant, perhaps even touching because we can feel what’s coming, the angry, resolute splash page of Aisha locked and loaded for one final fire fight is as good a depiction of a woman warrior as one will find.

We live in an age when comics come and go quickly, with 30 issues or so being a solid run for a title that barely cracked the Top 100. So it’s great that Vertigo gave The Losers the time to grow and develop. But for all this title’s previous bang, it’s a shame that it now ends with a whimper.