Written by: Joshua Williamson
Art by: Riley Rossmo, Ivan Plascencia, and Deron Bennett
Cover Price: $3.99
Release Date: June 20, 2018
**NON-SPOILERS AND SCORE AT THE BOTTOM**
With only two issues left to go, I fully expect Joshua Williamson and Co. to put together an ending that is just as balls-to-the-wall fun as the first four issues were. Riley Rossmo's art really impressed me at first, and although the quality has taken a bit of a dip since then, it's still better than I expected. Even if I hated it, I'm having so much fun following Luna and Val's wacky adventure that it doesn't even matter anymore. Let's take a look and see if this penultimate issue keeps the momentum going.
Explain It!
Val is stuck in her hallucinations, being chased by her past in the form of a huge, three-headed monster version of herself. All the while this monster is telling her she sucks and that she owes it a better life. Val is running away, saying she's sorry, but she just stops for a second and decides to take action once again. I feared that this bit of Val's character development might get left behind in between the issues, but I was very glad to see Val is still determined to take action instead of always holding back and watching others. So she unleashes a hugely powerful punch on this monster and snaps out of it. Unfortunately, she's not really in much better of a position, still finding herself in a pool filled with pee and stinging jellyfish. Val manages to fight off the jellyfish, grab Luna's unconscious body, and get away.
She wakes up and realizes that she did it, she saved them! After looking around, she finds Luna is a self-reflective state, talking about how he now realizes how badly he hurt those around him throughout his life. In order to find out why the mummy ninjas have been chasing him, they head back to his childhood home: Nocturna Island. Luna reveals to Val that his parents had come to the island hoping to make it into a paradise, but he was the reason they gave up on their dreams. He tells Val the story of his childhood, and it's actually pretty messed up the amount of pressure his parents put on him to be great.
Just as Luna is finishing telling Val all of this, Zerachiel pops out and starts fighting him. As the last member of the island people that worshipped the Luna family, Zerachiel is determined to kill him. But as Luna lies on his back seemingly about to die, he reaches up and takes a big bite out of Zerachiel's neck. Val thinks it's all over now, but Luna knows that isn't true, so he takes her to his old secret fort from his childhood. He tells Val how he had hoped to be an astronaut one day, and even tried to build a homemade rocket ship. Luna is kind of being a downer, and says that he is done trying to finish his mission. He wants Val to just go home so he can give up and die in peace. As she has done so many times before in this book, Val talks, or yells, some sense into Luna's thick skull, and they hop in to the homemade rocket and aim for the moon. Somehow, they make it off the ground and the issue ends with them crash landing on the moon, surrounded by ruins and a big building in the background.
While the pacing in this issue was a little bit slower than the first four, it was still pretty fast. This book never takes very long to get through, and that was the case yet again. There is only one issue left in this series, and I'm really not sure how it is going to get wrapped up in one issue. All I know is that I am hoping it sticks the landing because this has been a very solid series thus far.
The art here was about on par for where it has been the past few issues. I thought Riley Rossmo did some really cool things with the different panel layouts, and switched it up enough to keep it fun. One thing that bugs me is the fact that every issue, Val's boobs seem to get bigger and bigger. Val has never had the "traditional" body type that you see in comics, which is great and I like that about her. But by this time, her boobs have grown so much, and they are getting ever closer to popping out of her shirt it seems, that it's getting to be a bit much. I understand that the drawings don't alway match the character models perfectly, but this is very noticeable to me.
Bits and Pieces
This was a perfectly serviceable penultimate issue. It didn't do anything to blow me away, but the story keeps chugging along and I was very happy to see that Val's character development stuck and we didn't have to retread that territory. There is still a lot of ground to cover, so hopefully the last issue wraps everything up in an entertaining way without feeling too rushed. The finale could end up making or breaking this entire series.
7.1/10
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