Final Boss #8 // Review
The soldiers are looking at a giant map on the wall of an ancient temple. There are images of gods in the presence ofh tat map. They don’t look familiar. There are gods of comba, earth, beasts, life and weather. They are clearly in unknown territory somewhere in the past in Final Boss #8. Writer/artist Tyler Kirkham continues his tale with art assists by David Miller and colorist Ifansyah Noor. Some level of complexity begins to set itself into the script of the series, but for the most part of this is a big and dumb and stupid affair.
Somewhere in the present, Tommy has found himself facing a new and deadly opponent in the tournament...a big and vicious-looking semi-humanoid with scales, sharp teeth and long claws. The arena for this particular combat includes the sewers beneath the island, which is going to give Tommy’s opponent a distinct advantage, but he’s been pretty successful thus far and his victory is more or less assured. The only questions left to be answered are precisely how he ’s goingto win and what he might learn in the process of the battle which lurks in the shadows ahead of him.
The backstory for Kirkham’s series begins to look a bit interesting. In certain ways, it might actually be a little bit more interesting than much of the rest of what he's working with. That wouldn't really be all that hard to do as much of the rest of what he is working with is actually incredibly dull. Including the set up for the fight with “Dragod. ” (See: he’s, “the leader of the coldbloods. The dragon god--Dragod!” See what he did there?)
The action hits the page quite well. Some of the speed and aggression of the combat feels interesting enough. Noor’s colors do a really good job of bringing home some of the power of the violence and the brutality of the combat. It's also very atmospheric in places. Light and texture feel suitably impressive. The coloring is really probably the best single part about the issue. The close-ups feel a little too tight in places. But for the most part is pretty confidently executed with respect to the action.
Theoretically there's a very cool premise at the heart of the series that seems a bit too modeled by aspirations towards anything bigger. In theory, there could be one or two sub plots that would be left out and if Kirkham was willing to focus almost exclusively on the combat and the competition with little cut scenes in between that would be more like a actual combat video game. It might actually be kind of cool. But instead, he's trying to fuse it too much with a traditional superhero style comic book story and it just doesn't feel comfortable on the page. It's a big and dumb and stupid premise. If he would just write the script to be true to that it would probably be a lot more fun.
