Daily Archives: 2 February 2012

The series ends with some undeniable problems–the Romeo and Juliet aspect is idiotic–but Richardson and Stradley manage to reign in their big conspiracy storyline.

They don’t resolve some of their threads, which is both a good and bad decision. It’s good because there’s not enough room for the resolution, but bad because they sort of promised it for the first half of the series.

There’s a lot of content to this issue–it’s not just a wrap-up. The wrap-up is saved for the last three pages or so… and it isn’t enough. This issue’s problems with pacing sort of reveal the series’s problems with it in general.

Gulacy is rushed here. He can’t make it all fit. It’s the least impressive art on the entire series, though there are some good space battles at the open.

The series nearly succeeds, overcoming a few major story problems.

It’s a romance now? Seriously? Wow.

After a solid first half, Richardson and Stradley are running off the rails. They set up a convoluted set of schemes and subterfuges and are now rapidly resolving them. And what solves them all? Sworn enemies kissing.

But the issue has a bunch of great Gulacy sci-fi action so it’s impossible not to enjoy it. There’s spaceship battles, there’s blaster fights, it goes on and on. Even the talking heads stuff is great; Gulacy’s got lots of Star Wars technology around to draw.

But the writing has just gone off the deep end. The writers introduce a major new character this issue (more important than any other new character in Council of Blood actually) and reveal he’s been working behind the scenes the whole series.

It’s a complete mess. It’s like Richardson and Stradley changed their minds about the series’s plot halfway through.

I’m not sure it’s possible this issue could have a softer cliffhanger. Soft as it may be, it does signal a change in Council of Blood… it’s finally a sequel to Crimson Empire.

Until this issue, Richardson and Stradley have been avoiding what they promised at the finish of the first series. While the previous issues touched on it, they more concentrated on the overall Dark Horse Star Wars universe. This issue brings Sinn (I finally remember her dumb name) and the Imperial Guard together.

And it does so on a strange planet with stranger aliens and Gulacy has a great time with all of it. There’s a lot of action this issue; Gulacy has to condense approximately twelve action panels to one page.

It’s a packed issue.

Sadly, bringing back the first series’s character relationship, the writers start to stumble. It’s an okay comic, but the characters are nonsensical.