Doctor Fate #18 Review and *SPOILERS*

No Fate

Written By: Paul Levitz
Art By: Brendan McCarthy, Mark Harrison, Saida Temofonte
Cover Price: $2.99
Release Date: November 16, 2016

*Non Spoilers and Score At The Bottom*

This series has been the bane of my existence for a long ass time now and I'm so happy that it's finally ending here because seeing Doctor Fate like this was just a kick to the balls every month when I would have to open this book to see what kind of nonsense and whining Khalid was up to and the reason it killed me to do that was because we already had a bad ass Doctor Fate going on in Earth 2 and seeing one that was so much less than what we were used to seemed like a terrible slap to the face.  Really, I blame the writing because Khalid could have been a pretty cool character, but he never got a chance to shine and at this point I'd rather bury this series than have to go through the time to make him a viable character, but maybe that's just me.......... Well, no........ I've seen the sales, people aren't happy with Khalid, but maybe now that he's traversing the threads of destiny we can see him go out a hero that we can all look fondly back on............ but I doubt it.  Let's jump into this final issue and check it out.



Explain It!:

Our issue begins with Khalid being transported into a Pharaoh's tomb, but no tomb that the world has ever seen because this seems to be the resting place of the God Thoth and while at first I thought that we were finally going to get some answers out of this book because of how the Sphinx and Nabu have just been about nonsense and riddles, we really don't get much out of Thoth either.  Just, you can do good or you can do bad........ and the world will reflect what you do.  Yeah, it's a little more clearer and also points out that Khalid is a big deal, but since this is the last issue, that doesn't really do much for me.

After Khalid's time with Thoth........ who designed a stupid ass looking helmet since he has a huge ass bird beak, Khalid is transported back to Clothorus' realm, where we find out that this creature has no real claim to fate or the destinies of people and is instead feeding on the souls of the people, who's life thread it cuts.  Initially, it looks like our hero is finally getting into this big boy pants by taking out the dreamspinners that act as minions to Clothorus, but they quickly over run Khalid and we see our hero about to die once again as Clothorus lowers him into a mystical fire.  Like every other issue though, things just happen because.......... magic...... and Khalid is able to overcome Clothorus by using the magic inside of him to shut this realm down and transform it into an egg, which he takes with him as he falls back to Earth.  To end our story, we see the most heroic thing that Khalid has ever done and that's him stepping on the egg, making sure that the threat isn't able to come back and haunt him later on.

That's it for this series of Doctor Fate and like the rest of this series, this issue is just a mess, where things just happen because Khalid believes them to happen and ultimately, it feels like the perfect end because it stayed consistent with everything that we've gotten previously.  The two decent things we got out of this issue though were the excellent art that continued from the previous issue and the fact that Khalid wasn't whining about not knowing what to do.  Yeah, he just does things without really knowing how, but less whine is always a good thing and I'll take the "magic" explanation over that anytime.  I'm just happy that this series is over and that I don't have to read it anymore because it was a chore every month and hopefully after some time people can forget about this so that DC can put out a proper Doctor Fate series or even just resurrect this one with Khalid, just with a new writer.

Bits and Pieces:

Doctor Fate is finally over and I'm sure there's dancing in the streets over it because this series was just a mess and besides for the excellent art here, this issue is no different.  Things just happen "because" and we never really get the idea that Khalid will go on to be a great hero at the end or just revert back to his whining ways.

4.5/10