We’re Taking Everyone With Down Us #6 // Review
The girl has a gun pointed at Rook. Rook has a gun pointed at the girl. Either one of them could pull a trigger at any moment and they both might be dead. To make mattes a bit more complicated, all of this IS happening in a high-tech facility carved into an active volcano and only one of them has a jetpack. Things come to an end in We’re Taking Everyone With Down Us #6. Writer Matthew Rosenberg and artist Stefano Landini close-out their six-part series with colorist Jason Wordie. There are a few more twists in the twisted supervillain drama before it reaches its final panel.
In order to engage Rook, the girl needs to take-out a small army of well-dressed, well-armed men wearing balaclavas. That’s the easy part. The more complicated part is going to involve engaging Rook in the bowels of an active volcano without getting herself killed. The man is expertly trained. He’s got information that she doesn’t have. That information might complicate things a bit for her as negotiations progress. She’s got more than a few tricks up her sleeve. It’s not going to be easy for either of them.
Rosenberg cranks-up the pacing considerably at the end of the series. The writer is really running the risk of making the whole thing feel rushed. Thankfully, this is not the case. The pacing actually ends-up working to the benefit of the series as the final chapter kind of has a lot to cover and it’s not all going to come together in a neat, little ending. There are a lot of loose ends that curl themselves around the edges of the central plot and its overwhelming momentum. The jagged edges of narrative that close-out the issue feel a bit haphazard, but they definitely make for an entertaining close to the series.
Landini catapults the action across the page. The opening scene with the girl and the guards is very slick and stylish. The quick movements and the precision of the movement are delivered in a way that doesn’t undercut their brutality. Everything seems to find the right place on the page under the pen of Landini. It’s very sharp execution on every level. Wordie’s colors cast everything in a wash that leaves room for blood splatter and the occasional pop of luminescence. There’s a rich sense of atmosphere that clings to the page at the end of the series.
The series works, though bits of it seem to be at odds with the overall narrative momentum of the series. Rosenberg had a few things to deliver that needed to be put together, but it’s a pleasantly strange sort of an execution that seems to be working around the edges of everything. Honestly...the biggest accomplishment on the part of Rosenberg is probably the fact that nearly everyone in the entire ensemble is appealing on some level. That’s quite an accomplishment given how large the extended ensemble is.
