Disrupt. Destroy. Distrust. Disinform.
Improve. Cooperate. Build. Emancipate. Complete.
Spoilers
Cover by Tyler
and Hillary Jenkins.Written by Matt Kindt
Illustrated by Tyler Jenkins
Colored by Hillary Jenkins
Lettered by Jim CampbellThe Badges finally face off against the dastardly Honour Society, with the fate of the future hanging in the balance.
“Black Badge” #12 closes out Kindt & the Jenkinses’ latest collaboration with a bang and a whispered secret, the only way this strange, strange series could have ended. The central conceit of the series, What if the scouting organizations of the world were more like CIA than the army?, was not for everyone, and perhaps not even for fans of Kindt’s prior work “Mind MGMT.” It delved into conspiracies and the ground constantly shifted beneath our, and the characters’, feet, so what was true one issue no longer remained so the next. Characters weren’t particularly deep and it was hard to keep in line who knew what or even what was going on.
However, by this final issue, that uncertainty has been washed away, and a concrete end is produced, with little ambiguity in the motivations or effect of the characters. This may seem at odds with the question above but thematically it works. The series has been about environments that breed conspiracies and the dangers of unquestioning loyalty to ideals that destabilize and promote more control. And so, to end on these same soldiers putting their talents to use in humanitarian situations, unambiguously doing good and finally happy on their own terms, it provides closure to the narrative and a satisfying end to these character’s lives, insofar as we are privy to them.
You’d be forgiven for thinking that “Black Badge” #12 ends both way too soon and at exactly the right point. The series thus far has been highly compressed, making these twelve issues feel like twenty four. This issue is the same, with a lot of information conveyed through a small number of panels and scenes, even though the first 14 pages are dedicated, in much the same way as the first couple issues, to one singular mission. But the “Black Badge” team uses that one mission to illustrated how far these kids have come as well as the new status quo.
And it’s an exciting status quo too. Tyler and Hillary Jenkins’ artwork is rough and shaky, colored with watercolors, and for some, the uneven faces and splotchy coloring works against the enjoyment of the comic. The linework is deceptively simple and loose, just a bit of outlining in what appears to be a thin pen, with the watercolors doing the rest of the work of defining the scenes and producing the necessary depth. For me, it works because it abstracts the reality in a way that captures the rough and uneven nature of the world. It fits the themes of the piece and in Hillary Jenkins’ coloring, you can see the variants in shades that nature captures and the uneven and hard to predict lighting that comes from the sun, as rendered by the white spaces in her coloring.
Plus, the composition of each page is deft and confidant, successfully building tension and action by relying on open pages that focus on scale and size rather than cluttering a page with the minutiae of a fight or action scene. The environments are given room to breathe and expand, to be more than backgrounds. . .And then the world opens up, showing snippets of other missions before drilling back down to the personal core of the series.
All that said, I still feel as if the story wrapped up too quickly, the condensed nature of the narrative working against it as much as it did for it. It felt like the final confrontation was rushed so that we could dedicate an entire issue to an epilogue rather than a conclusion to the main conflict building. Jumping to this issue from #11 makes it seem like there should have been one more issue between the two, to decompress just a little bit and delve further into our four leads.
As it stands, we don’t get nearly enough of a resolution for our four main characters, and there is still the question looming over the series: Is what they’re doing good? Kindt has taken great care in previous chapters to complicate and grey the missions of the Black Badges, as a commentary on the spy genre and on the real life analogs that the US has employed.
Sure, “Black Badge” #12 positions us to see what they’re doing as positive, and it most certainly is different from the self-serving, power guarding acts of before, but as Hooka admits, “Only time will tell what the future holds.” What they are doing may end up being just as misguided in ways they don’t see. However, what good is an ending if everything is neatly answered. What’s left to chew on if it’s all been explained? What remains for our imagination when all has been imagined for us?
Final Score: 7.3 – “Black Badge” ends much as it began: strange, earthy-crunchy, adventurous, and filled with ideas that are well explored but never quite answered.
