This Ends Tonight #1 // Review
Katie and Anna are going out on the town in Vegas. Katie just turned 21. Anna had to practically drag her to Vegas to celebrate. Things are about to get crazy in more ways than one as the two women visit the oddly-named strip club known as Steak and Beef. Anna hasn’t told Katie everything, but she’s going to have to tell her in a hurry in This Ends Tonight #1. Writer Gerry Duggan and artist Jae Lee open a three-part series with style, beauty and quite a bit of grizzly action. It’s a fun race through the darker end of contemporary fantasy.
Anna always told Katie that she was adopted. Katie always figured that it was a cruel joke that Anna was playing on her. Turns out she wasn’t teasing. And that family trust? It’s not just money. It’s so much more than that as she discovers when Anna reveals Katie’s pointed ears. It’s a bit of a shock for Katie, but she’s a bit too busy trying to survive to cope with it. Both Anna and Katie are being attacked by powerful forces. Katie can handle herself in strange and brutal combat. Anna just might find talent that she didn’t know she had...
Duggan marches right into the story. There really isn't enough of an introduction to establish a baseline for what is normal in the world of the story, though. And so when the action hits the page right away, it's more disorienting than it is exciting. And that's probably by design. But it's not exactly engaging. The story engages through the chaos that maneuvers around the pages. This can feel very jarring. In order for it to be more effective, it would have needed to have more of a lead-in. There is, however, more than enough went in and around the dialogue and the overall presentation of the premise to keep the pages turning.
The action may be moving a little bit quickly, but it is captured quite well by Jae Lee. The Las Vegas setting of the story doesn't necessarily come across with a hell of a lot of detail. However, there's more than enough action going on in the foreground to allow one to forget about the overall setting of the story. The problem is that this isn't exactly helping. Make the story coherent. Everything temples around in the foreground and it's hard to find a firm footing for any of it.
It's a fun issue. And perhaps things will settle down a little bit more in the mid point next month. That would allow enough of a breather for the whole premise to finally sink in. As it is, things need to move very, very quickly in order to grab the reader and haul them through what it is that needs to happen. The disorientation is a necessary part of the overall premise because without it, we don't necessarily feel what Katie feels and that’s a very big part of the story.
