This is the end of “Numbercruncher” – and what a brutal, kinetic, and enlightening trip it has been. Straight from issue one, this no-nonsense take on a heavenly bureaucracy has given us plenty to think about, pitting a mortal mathematician would rather not die against a heavenly enforcer who’ll have none of it. It’s also turned out to be something of a love story, always maintaining its own unique edge of course, and no matter what got you interested in the first place, you’ll find your favourite aspects of the story weaved beautifully into this conclusion. So far as endings go, “deftly constructed” doesn’t quite do this one justice.
Written by Si Spurrier
Illustrated by P.J. HoldenAn epic battle of wits, wills and divine accountancy has twisted across decades and multiple lifetimes, and now the clash between Bastard Zane and the reincarnating Mathematician is coming to a head.
Who gets what they want? Who loses everything forever? And, when all the cunning plans and clever tricks have been resolved… is there still one last card to play?
Don’t miss the epic finish to the miniseries everybody is talking about!
Bastard Zane has had enough of chasing the mathematician Richard Thyme from incarnation to incarnation. He wants his freedom, which means stopping Thyme, and he’s going to get it by erasing the guy’s memory. No memory, no need for Thyme to keep reuniting with the same woman in lifetime after lifetime, right?
Of course, it doesn’t play out as smoothly as that, and there are plenty of surprises to be encountered long after Zane determines he’s succeeded. In a series that has been all about sub-contracting, and exploiting loopholes in heavenly law, you can bet there’s some more cleverness to be had in the direction of Mr. Thyme, and like a shot of Zane’s accident gun to the head, this book delivers.
The master stroke of this story, though, has been the portrayal of the effects of all this on Thyme’s other half, Jess, the woman he keeps coming back to. Running into a never-ending series of different guys who all seem to love her with the same fervency, and who all wind up dying in short order, has not had the best impact on her mental state. Here, the full weight of Thyme’s impact on her life is brought to light, and it’s some weighty stuff. As comic and light-hearted as this story has been, darker themes like these hold their own and offset the monkeying around beautifully. And like all the other threads of this story, Jess’s plight is worked into the brilliant solution. Again: that’s some elegant writing.
Best of all, plot details that seemed out-of-place in previous issues pay off spectacularly here. Given how dense with detail the book has been since the beginning, my feeling is this conclusion will probably read even better in trade, where all the plot can be dispensed in one lump sum.
My only reservation about this title has to do with the imbalance between Zane and Thyme as regards likeability, because Zane is always the loveable gold-hearted thug and Thyme doesn’t quite get that far. The nobility as well as the darkness of his character alike come across in this issue, but in the end a certain undertone of smugness makes it difficult to think of him as the tragic hero. In a way, this story has always been Zane’s; Thyme has only provided the circumstances.
P.J. Holden’s art, meanwhile, puts forth some surprises of its own, maintaining its usual loose ink-and-wash style during the heavenly scenes but throwing in a moment of hyper-realism to keep us on our toes. Bastard Zane is as always a delight – a perpetual tough-guy, not without a certain romantic appeal, who can be a cigarette-chomping cartoonish goon in one panel and oddly thoughtful in the next, all the while feeling like a consistent and believable character. The scenes on the mortal plane get cleaner lines (plus colours from Jordie Bellaire, and do I need to tell you they’re fabulous?), and so the characters comes across that much more grotesque, injecting an extra bit of irony and edge into the proceedings. It’s a dynamic look, zipping between different styles and colouring schemes but always maintaining a surreal sensibility.
Continued belowThere are some big moments in this issue, but Holden’s storytelling is always up to the challenge, setting up some epic splash pages that deliver a lot of information in one go but always read smoothly. That’s actually one of the chief triumphs of this series: that so much plot comes across, and yet you never trip over it. Far from being at odds with one another, the wealth of plot is matched by the sheer scope and imagination of the art.
Capping off an intricate plot, and resolving as many logical loopholes as it does character arcs, this ending is as satisfying as you could ask for, as well as distinctive and novel. Here’s hoping this story will find a (highly apropos) second life in trade – it’s profound and visually dynamic as all get-out, and will certainly delight its fair share of overthinkers.
Final Verdict: 8.9 – Buy that trade
