Deathbed #4 Review and **SPOILERS**

Into The Jellyfish Tank

Written by: Joshua Williamson
Art by: Riley Rossmo, Ivan Plascencia, and Deron Bennett
Cover Price: $3.99
Release Date: April 18, 2018

**NON-SPOILERS AND SCORE AT BOTTOM**

In a world full of dark, edgy comics, with stories meant to confuse readers, make a statement, or have some profound and hidden meaning, sometimes you just need a book to help you unwind and have some fun. So far, this has been that book. Coming into the series, I thought it was going to be dark and tell a deep, profound story all the way through. But instead, it has become one of the more entertaining books I read every month, while also throwing a good message in there with it. I can only hope that Joshua Williamson keeps that going for the rest of the series. Let's take a peak in and see how the home stretch starts out.


Explain It!

So Luna thinks his memory is failing him. He can't remember certain details about his life, despite the fact that he prides himself on being able to remember everything. As he and Val flee from the scene of the murdered Church of Luna worshippers holding a severed head, Val contemplates giving up on the story. Luna says that he will pay her in full as soon as he gets his memories back, so they head off to the Underwater Pleasure Gardens of Womba. Despite the fact that he is no longer welcome there, Luna believes that this place is the key to restoring his memory.

After Luna and Val sneak into the place, they make their way over to a fish tank full of jellyfish. In order to get his memories back, Luna has to dive into the tank and let these rare jellyfish sting him. That will trigger some flashbacks that let him relive portions of his life and hopefully remember who the severed head belongs to. Luna tells Val to keep watch, which is what she's best at, and dives right in.

When he gets stung and starts sifting through some of his major accomplishments, he realizes that a lot of them were lies. One example he gives is when he was a wrestling champion, it wasn't because he was the best wrestler but rather because it was fixed for him to be the champion. Eventually, Luna lands in a memory from when he was the CEO of Luna Industries. Bored out of his mind at being a boss stuck in an office all day, Luna realizes that this is when he gave up on his own story.

Meanwhile, outside of the tank, Val is thinking about how Luna told her that she is best at keeping watch. She comes to the realization that she had spent her life watching people, never really acting. So when the Sisters of Cognitive Creation (the natives of this land) come up to tell her to get the hell out with Luna, it's time for her to act. These sirens pour a bunch of pee into the tank, which makes the jellyfish go wild with their stings and inject some weird stuff into Luna's hallucinations. He sees people transforming into zombies and he is fighting off zombified versions of himself in his past careers.

Val finally takes it upon herself to act instead of always watching others, and she dives in to save Luna before he runs out of air. She gets to him and gets ahold of him for a second, but then she starts getting stung and gets some weird hallucinations of her own. She goes through her childhood and when she decided to be a writer before a big giant, creature version of her comes running after her telling her that "You let us down! You suck!" This fourth issue ends with both Luna and Val stuck in the tank, not knowing if they'll be able to get out.

Overall, this was a really fast-paced issue. There is quite a bit of dialogue here, but it reads very quickly. The art took another small dip in my mind from where it was in the first two issues, but it is still my favorite Riley Rossmo art I've seen. I'm having a lot of fun with the off-the-walls pacing and storytelling here. Although Luna isn't a very relatable character, I really like Val and the way she is portrayed from issue to issue. I won't say this was a perfect issue by any means, but it was a lot of fun.

Bits and Pieces:

While the art was down a little bit for me, the story keeps going at this frenetic pace that is a lot of fun. I've stopped trying to predict what is coming next for our characters and instead I'm just going with whatever happens. This is definitely one of the more fun and wacky books on the shelves today, and one that I would definitely recommend purely for the entertainment value.

8.5/10