Art by: Leomacs, Luca Finelli, Adriano Turtulici, Daniele Miano, Federico Tardino
Colors by: Jason Wordie
Letters by: Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou
Cover art by: Sam Wolfe Connelly
Cover price: $6.99
Release date: October 18, 2022
Rogues #4 ends the mini-series with Leonard Snart and his surviving colleagues in an impossible standoff against Gorilla Grodd. When Snart takes a bold step to escape the situation, things go from bad to much worse.
Is It Good?
You have to give Joshua Williamson credit for swinging for the fences in this finale. Rogues #4 finishes the mini-series with sky-high dramatic tension, (sometimes bloody) action, twists, and turns. However, the plot fails to stick the landing as the last half of the issue devolves into a DC-versioned retelling of Reservoir Dogs (1992). If you know how that movie ends, you know how this story ends. If you don't know that film, read on past the spoiler warning.
[SPOILERS AHEAD]
That's right. Everybody dies, including Gorilla Grodd. The End.
In between the deaths, - some are spectacular, some will blindside you - Williamson peppers in a fair amount of Snart narrating his upbringing. The narration fleshes out Snart's motivations and adds depth to his character. Still, you can't help wondering if it would have been better to understand Snart's motivations at the beginning instead of at the end.
Therein lies the problem. Williamson doesn't quite stick the landing with this ending. The mini begins with an interesting take on older Rogues going out for one last score, creating layers of subtext about finding self-worth and self-respect. By the time we get to the end, Snart's plan is a bust, so all he has left is a desire to go out in a blaze of glory rather than live out his remaining years as blue-collar nobody.
It's unclear what message, if any, Williamson meant to convey in this ending. You're left with awful people doing awful things to each other until they wind up killing each other. When a slight spark of hope is introduced at the very end, it's brutally snuffed out with meaningless violence, leaving you wondering, "What was the point?"
Indeed. What was the point of this mini-series? To show you the end of a sad group of broken, miserable, former criminals? Was the point to fashion a mini-series filled with weird, intriguing, but ultimately pointless drama? The world may never know.
The art is a mixed bag of shapes, colors, and perspectives. As you can see from the credits above, a Rogues-sized gang of artists worked on this book, and it feels as uneven and chunky as you would expect. Further, this is not Wordie's best work as the coloring is frequently amorphous and washed out. You can see what's going on, and the panel compositions are the artistic highlight, but this art will not have wide appeal.
About The Reviewer: Gabriel Hernandez is the Publisher & EIC of ComicalOpinions.com, a comics review site dedicated to indie, small, and mid-sized publishers.
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Bits and Pieces:
Rogues #4 is packed with hard-hitting, sometimes-bloody action, and plenty of character-building for Leonard Snart, but the ending is simply sad and makes the whole mini-series feel pointless. Williamson did not stick the landing on this one.
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