Gideon Falls Volume 6: The End

I began my review of the previous Gideon Falls volume, Wicked Worlds, with the précis “Sheer chaos.” Well, I hadn’t seen anything yet!

In this final part of the story reality comes even more undone, exploding into a barrage of double-page spreads that make you turn the book upside-down to read, or that shatter the page layout or invoke the stairways of Piranesi, or that finally dissolve into ALL WHITE. NOTHING. That latter being the text description from the script for the comic that’s included in this edition as a bonus.

Also included is a visual essay by Andrea Sorrentino on “The Inner Workings of Gideon Falls.” I was hoping this would explain the comic’s multidimensional geography (or “Gideonverse”) a little better, as it even comes with maps that look borrowed from academic editions of Dante’s Comedy, but I ended up being just as confused after looking at them. I doubt there’s any way of explaining what’s going on adequately.

Which means there’s no way I can summarize things here. I’m not sure what happens or why. Our heroes dive into the evil half of the cosmos, confront the Bug God, and destroy the Pentoculus. This action turns out to be of more consequence than blowing up the Black Barn, which can always be rebuilt. And maybe the Pentoculus gets rebuilt too, since we get an inevitable, irritating final panel that suggests there’s no way of putting things right.

I did like this series, mainly as a showcase for Sorrentino’s art. But in The End I thought that art had taken over too much, shoving the story to one side and not bringing things together in a way I found very satisfying. I thought the story as it originally started out had more potential than this. To be honest, it felt like Lemire had checked out by this point and told Sorrentino to just draw anything before turning the lights out when he was done.

Graphicalex