Written by Mark Waid
Drawn by Diego Barreto
SC, 24 pgs, FC, SRP: $3.99
COVER A: Paul Azaceta
COVER B: Dan PanosianThe battle that you’ve been waiting for is finally here! After failing to prevent the slaughter of millions and being forced to confront the betrayal of Bette Noir, the Paradigm must finally face the Plutonian — and not everyone will make it out alive! Don’t miss this staggering issue of Mark Waid’s revolutionary superhero saga! Covers by Paul Azaceta and Dan Panosian.
Follow me behind the cut as I take at the most explosive issue of Irredeemable in recent memory. Seriously – this is a good one, folks. I should also add that some minor spoilers are discussed, but nothing to flat out ruin the comic for you.
You know, I can remember when I thought Irredeemable was a 12-issue series. It kind of made sense, right? There are 12 letters in the word, BOOM was doing letter variants, and it came out at the same time as another book with a similar premise that was announced as 12 issues. However, now we’re at 15, so I was inevitably proven wrong on that one. Of course, my biggest fear in pushing past that point was that the book would become a tad unfocused. Irredeemable isn’t like your average on-going – there was a set purpose right from the get go, and the characters were already halfway to figuring out how to deal with their situation before the first year mark. However, with the introduction of new characters and new angles, a brand new door opened for the book and it became time to see how well Irredeemable held up past it’s initial shock value (considering the Plutonian hasn’t destroyed a continent in a while).
Well, this issue brought me right back into the book. For a couple issues now my attention had been wavering a tad because I missed the insanity that was so prevalent in the first two arcs, but now it appears everything is back in order. The issue largely deals with the chaos brought on by the Plutonian finally butting heads against Cary in a cataclysmic battle in and out of the Earth. We finally get to see Modeus tip his hand, but at the same time the villain Orion is lurking in the background. The question then becomes – can they really stop the Plutonian once and for all? And can they trust Qubit at all anymore?
In a sense, a lot of dangling threads were both cleared up and new paths are opened. Orion’s plot ends here, and we finally actually get to have Modeus in the book. He’d been teased for a long time, especially since the beginning, but now to have him “alive” once more is pretty exciting. The odd thing about it is, we’ve never actually met Modeus or seen his relationship with the Plutonian before. We came into the story past the point where Plutonian had lost his marbles and Modeus was long gone. It’s just a sign of good writing on Waid’s part that he was still able to create a strong emotional reaction in me, the reader, based on only flashbacks. It was as cool to have Modeus appear as it is any other supervillain, so kudos to Waid on that.
Really, the story has always been about the characters more than it has the plot, and Waid has developed a great set of characters in this book that are 100% entertaining to follow. I love seeing the twists and turns in character arcs as some characters still have entirely questionable motives. The goal is to defeat the Plutonian, but now we have to question Qubit’s endgame as well as Modeus, and since Bette’s magic bullet is “gone”, we have to in turn wonder how the Paradigm is ever going to get the upper hand again. This issue presented the endgame that should have ended the story falling to pieces because no one trusts each other anymore. The devolving of the team aspect moving in turn to a group survival aspect has drastically altered the course the book originally had the reader believing it would go. Now we’re just as lost as we were in the beginning, and it’s actually a great place to be.
While initially I was afraid that the plot would get too stale the longer it set out, Irredeemable #15 revived my hope in the series. I love big culminating fight issues, and this issue was an amazing example of how to feature huge action sequences amidst intense plot twists. It also reset the counter, so to speak, and has allowed us to become reinvigorated in the story and it’s plot because while at first we were on the run from the Plutonian, now he’s on the run from us. I can’t wait to see what happens next.
Final Verdict: 8.4 – Buy
