Written by Tony Bedard
Illustrated by Claude St. AubinWith Starro the Conqueror on the verge of complete victory, our rebel fighters Lobo, Vril Dox, Adam Strange, Starfire and the gang pull out all the stops in this series’ bloody conclusion!
Some of DC’s books are now coming to an end. Last week we gave a fond farewell to the underrated Doom Patrol, and – as well with JSA All-Stars – now REBELS too comes to it’s unfortunate close. The continued story of Starro versus Vril is going to come to it’s inevitable conclusion, and I will of course be there to see it all go down.
So – did the REBELS get the send-off it deserved? Or was it not worth it after all this time?
Check the cut for some thoughts on the finale.
In comics, there are many books that fans get attachment to and define as “little books that could.” REBELS is certainly one of those titles. Coming out as an unknown space-based title in a world where the Green Lantern Corps reign supreme, the odds were definitively stacked against the group. It also featured a rather niche group of characters and, unlike most of the space-related stuff around Infinite Crisis, it wasn’t written by Dave Gibbons. Indeed, REBELS was off to a rocky start.
But as time went on, REBELS definitely filled it’s part in the “little book that could” group. As it evolved, the story quickly became a never ending battle between the remnants of LEGION against Starro, a cosmic villain planning his violent return to the universe. It ended up becoming a nice 28-issue story about Vril Dox’s rise as a hero, as he slowly gets a team together to eventually fight back – for profit – against the forces of Starro. Taking time to hop quickly in Blackest Night and even add an epilogue to the War of New Krypton, REBELS ended up finding success with fans by keeping itself self-contained to it’s own space-madness, fully utilizing underused characters like Adam Strange and Lobo, who had fallen into the category of “cult” characters and/or characters to be used when a random c-list character is needed for a space connection.
So now we come to the final issue. This is, in many ways, what Bedard had been gradually building towards since Starro first came back in the pages of the title. Starro has all but won in this issue, even managing to get one of his nasty space stars onto the face of Vril Dox, leaving us in the hands of his angry and previously pro-Starro son, Lyrl. With our various heroes fighting for their lives and Lobo having left to drink a beer with Smite, would Lyrl prevail as a hero? Or would he let everyone die and join his former master?
I don’t think it’s too spoiler-y to say, the heroes do save the day. This is a comic book in DC after all. We’re not going to end on a down note and then do a massive Starro-based event next year (…right?). And in the end, we have a fully insular story. You can read REBELS from beginning to end and have an effective (if slow) beginning, a fixed middle point, and then a build-up to a bombastic end. REBELS has reveled in a world not used, using characters we rarely get to see, and while Bedard does not fully utilize some of the capabilities of the characters, he does write the title in a sinister enough manner that you kind of forget you’re cheering on an asshole of a character. No, none of the Braniacs are really all that brainy (despite a nice trick from Lyrl, which is ultimately rather elementary of a maneuver), but Bedard writes a biting script that gives a lot of “yeah!” moments to the fans of the title. Bedard doesn’t so much evolve the characters as he does write what makes them work, and while I can’t think of anyone that has really made Lobo dynamically different from a booze-driven bounty hunter with an attitude, that persona definitely works fullscale for the anti-hero, and he’s probably one of the best characters in the title. Besides, any writer that can make you care about a giant oafish brain-monkey i.e. Tribulus’ feelings at least a little bit has certainly done an effective enough job his run.
Continued belowThe title ultimately might have been more successful if at least one of the two Braniacs who have had an extended stay in the title was viciously smart like Braniac 1 (or even 5, for that matter), the story could have read more like a chess game. REBELS had a “secret plot” that really wasn’t very secret, and while everything certainly came together for a nice ending, it certainly never lived up to it’s potential. I enjoyed Bedard’s work on the title very much, but one can’t help but wish it had ended something more like Secret Warriors than just an average cosmic-based story. We had two master tacticians essentially going at one another in a free-form brawl as opposed to utilizing their brains and powers for anything but wonton violence and destruction. REBELS might have been a very fun title, but considering it’s main character was Braniac 2 and he spent the book just being an anti-hero (and kind of a dick, considering he managed to get drawn into the Sinestro Corps briefly), it’s not really a surprise that Braniac 1 disavowed him.
Ultimately, what worked for the title worked, and it’s not surprising that it went by a lot of people’s radars. I completely understand why REBELS got canned. I didn’t want it to happen, but the book has always appealed to a very specific audience. It has admittedly done a better job of being relevant to the DCU in ways that other insular titles don’t do, but it doesn’t feature any headliner characters. It’s similar to Marvel’s Agents of Atlas – these characters aren’t neccesarily heroes, but they still do a good job at saving the day for anyone willing to stick with the title. I myself only came to the title because I wanted a Blackest Night ring, and it just so happened that the evil bastard nature of Vril was entertaining enough to make me want to come back for more. Obviously that’s not for everyone. I suppose it’s fortunate for them that Bedard is now the writer of one of DC’s more popular titles, and with the last page of REBELS it’s very safe to say that the newly fixed LEGION will show up to help out in the aftermath of the War of the Green Lanterns, so this won’t be a case of “oh no, all these characters I like are now going to be gone forever so I have to start going to cons and asking DC at every DC Nation panel when these characters that admittedly only I care about will come back!” (Not that I’ve ever done that, but I’m sure you all get the joke.) They’ll obviously be back, and the time they got to spend by themselves was a purely fun comic book, if nothing special beyond that.
Until then, this is about as good of an ending as one could’ve hoped for for the title – everything introduced at the beginning of the series is properly wrapped up with only a few loose ends, and we even get our heroic ceremony for the victors as they lead-in to their next adventure. Nothing feels forced to a conclusion, and that’s a hell of a lot better than other titles got.
Final Verdict: 7.5 – Buy
