A small blip on the long fall to the bottom. (Are there blips on falls?) This issue is the best of the final six pot-Coup D'Etat issues and it's not that great. At least for my purposes. Don't get me wrong, these final six issues are not bad comic books; they're just boring comics that lack the ambition, style, scope and promise of the rest of the series. I'm judging them against the series's potential--and they fail. Nothing new in me saying that, though.In the subplot, Grifter's Wildcats over in Europe continue to fuck up Coda stuff and finally piss off the Coda enough that they notice them. The issue ends with a call to Jack Marlowe asking for back-up.
The main plot has a telepathic assassin infiltrating Halo as a janitor and trying to kill Marlowe. Agent Wax knows this and flies to Los Angeles to warn/help Marlowe. Not that that matters since Marlowe is a super-powered android (I say "super-powered" because of his connection with the Void entity) and knew about the assassin the whole time.
There's a showdown, but one of Casey's "anti-climatic" ones where Marlowe teleports himself, Wax and the nameless assassin to Otherspace, the source of the fuel for Halo's everlasting batteries. Here, Marlowe berates the assassin for being what he is--even calls him a cliche--before teleporting him directly into Otherspace. The sad thing here is that the scene is a cliche. The little speech Marlowe gives is a cliche. He's right, of course, but we've seen it a few times before in this series and the previous volume--from Marlowe. Marlowe doesn't act decisively exactly, he likes to toy with his prey, to make his little speeches... and then kill them. Or, he allows them to make their little speeches... and then kills them. He did it with Smith, Noir, the Smack Fairy... Actually, no, this is the first time in this volume that he did this. He's made speeches in this volume, but not before killing anyone like this. Another regression? Is this issue not a blip, but a further sign of the series's decline?
Today, in a post on Wildstorm, CSBG's Brad Curran claimed, that Casey's Wildcats "...is completely overrated by the 12 people who liked it and were really vociferous about it on the ‘net, from the small sample size I’ve read." He's right, you know (not about the 12 people or the "completely" part, but...). It is overrated and these final six issues--hell, most of the second half of the series--shows that. A book full of promise that turned into a failure artically and commercially. At least, before that, it was just a failure commercially.
Two more issues left.
