The Sacrificers #21 // Review
The end begins with a letter that he’s writing to her. He’s apologizing to her for what he felt he had to do in order to save her life. It’s not going to be easy for her to understand, but it’s something he felt the need to do as the palace was overrun with inevitability. That inevitability is going to hit in The Sacrificers #21. Writer Rick Remender concludes his epic saga with an issue that is brought to page and panel by artist Max Fiumara and colorist Dave McCaig. The big conclusion might point a bit towards cliche, but it’s powerful nonetheless.
They are storming the palace. There's a lot of people dying. On both sides. There's really no questioning how things are going to turn out in the end, though. There's just too many of them. The palace guard is not going to be able to turn them back. All that's left to be considered is what's going to happen to those people who are in charge of things. They might have some chance of survival. There might be some means of escape. Regardless, that are going to be important decisions that have to get made very quickly.
The entire issue is framed in the narration of the letter from a husband to his wife. It's actually a very powerful framing device. It helps keep the drama grounded in a very immediate relationships of a couple of characters have been around since the beginning of the series. A series like this could all too easily drift off in the direction of abstract, thematic concerns. And while that would be really interesting it wouldn't be true to the emotional center of the series. It's always had a very emotional center. And the gravity of that really holds the series together through the final issue.
There's an epic feel to the end of the series. Fumara she's away from a big and sweeping feeling of war overcoming everything. It certainly there. However, there is quite a lot of focus on individual characters that resonate well on the page. And though there are moments of large crowd, shots, and lots of corpses and things of that nature, the visuals that hold the entire series together seem to be most centrally focused on the individual emotions of individual characters. And certainly there's a very powerful element to that in. Fumara’s art as the series draws to a close.
Renender and company have taken a series quite a distance in just 21 issues. A story with as much somatic depth as. The Sacrificers might typically go for a feeling of a much longer epic. The series has become tremendous way in 21 issues. The remarkable thing about this is that Remender and company have managed to cover as much ground as they have without making it feel at all rushed. Everything has its space and its place on the page. And the pacing feels more or less perfect. In the end is quite an experience.
