The Gentleman Burglar: A Review of Lupin (Part 2)

 developed for television by 

George Kay

Francoi Uzan

Before the popular Netflix series Lupin dropped earlier this year I had no real idea who the character was and had only ever associated him with a popular Japanese anime series, Lupin III, which featured a gangly gentleman burglar sporting sideburns and his high-tech crew. It was popular enough here to warrant a live-action, localized adaptation and big enough in its native Japan to earn a computer-generated film update. 

I was genuinely surprised to learn, then, that Lupin was actually a popular French pulp hero whose origings date back to the early 20th century, when he was created by Maurice LeBlanc, a sort of "anti-Sherlock Holmes," and that the anime was derived from that work. 

The live-action Netflix series starring charismatic French actor Omar Sy isn't quite a reimagining of the story of Arsene Lupin, but rather the story of Assane Diop (Sy), a man so inspired by his pulp adventures as a gentleman burglar that he has emulated his lifestyle as a thief and a bit of a grifter.  There's more to Diop's motivations, however, than just boosting rich people's valuables; he's a man on a mission, and that is to uncover the truth behind the unjust imprisonment of his father, Babakar Diop (Fargasse Assande) who was framed for the theft of a valuable necklace by his employer Hubert Pelligrini (Herve Pierre) who faked the theft to claim the insurance money. Using his consummate skill and planning, the younger Diop actually steals the necklace, which belonged to the infamous French Queen Marie Antoinette and sets in motion a whole chain of events which, he hopes, will bring justice to his father after two and a half decades. It won't be easy, though, as Pelligrini has considerable resources at his disposal, including a police captain (Vincent Garanger) in his pocket, as well as a couple of armed goons, including the lethal Leonard (Adama Niane) and Pascal (Nicolas Wanczycki) to do his dirty work. And naturally, having actually stolen a necklace, whatever his ulterior motives may be, Diop has also got cops hot on his trail, especially fellow Lupin devotee Guedira (Soufiane Guerrab).  Things get really serious when Pelligrini has Leonard kidnap Lupin's son Raoul (Etan Simon) much to Lupin's consternation and that of his ex-girlfriend Claire (Ludivigne Sagnier). 

It won't be easy to take down Pelligrini, but with the help of his trusty sidekick Benjamin (Anthony Guoy), and Pelligrini's own daughter Juliette (Clotilde Hesme), Diop may yet prevail. 

I'm not reviewing "Part I" of the series but rather the last five episodes, or Part II, which came out a little under a month ago on Netflix.  "Part I" featured episodes directed by Now You See Me helmer Louis Letterier and as a result had the distinct heist movie vibe, like a French Ocean's Eleven.  I enjoyed most of the first five episodes quite a bit, especially as the storytellers revealed Diop's backstory bit by tantalizing bit.  Unfortunately, near the end, the series suffered from a serious case of plot-driven storytelling, in which the consummately crafty Diop basically forgot he had a brain and did something really careless to help move the story forward. 

I mention this because I'm quite relieved to report that there's no such storytelling faux pas here in Part II.  The storytelling is straightfoward and doesn't rely on any cheap, character-destroying tropes, and the cast execute their roles perfectly, especially Sy, who truly carries the series from the first episode down to the last, helped along qutie well by Mamaidou Hadara, who plays the fifteen-year-old version of him. Leterrier doesn't come back to direct any more episodes, but the remaining five still have that fantastic heist movie verve.  I was able to predict one of the twists (and I don't dare reveal which one it was) but I still thoroughly enjoyed the series.  Sure, if one really tried one could probably pick apart the logic of how the story played out, but as is the trademark of Lupin, the name of the game here is sleight of hand, and the way that the writers and directors keep the story moving along is just so clever that I really couldn't be bothered to think of any way that the plot make sense.

Given Netflix's proclivity for giving its series the axe, I'm really happy that Lupin is easily one of their most-watched series and sincerely hope it gets more seasons in the future.

 

9/10

The Filipino Komiks Adaptation We've Long Been Waiting For: A Review of "Trese"

 developed for the screen by Budjette Tan and Kajo Baldissimo, based on their comics series

When I first read the black-and-white issues of Budjette Tan's and Kajo Baldissimo's brand new comics series Trese back in 2005, I was hooked. The story of a detective, Alexandra Trese, taking on supernatural mysteries of the underworld armed was immensely appealing and for issue after issue Tan and Baldissimo just kept the compelling stories featuring creatures from Filipino mythology coming.  

This was long before the days of such sprawling comics adaptations as the Marvel Cinematic Universe but I already knew I wanted to see this series adapted into another form somehow. 

Therefore, when it was announced sometime during coronavirus pandemic (I don't remember exactly when anymore; time kind of lost all meaning then) that Netflix would be adapting this series into an anime, I was greatly enthused. Animation was, to my mind, the perfect vehicle as the storytellers wouldn't have to worry about finding the budget for special effects to render the supernatural aspect of the narrative. I only wondered how they would manage the comics' English dialogue with its smattering of Filipino. A Western voice cast would simply not do this series justice, I felt.

It's been nearly two weeks since all six episodes of Trese dropped on Netflix, and having seen them all twice over I'm happy to say I wasn't at all disappointed. The series boasted topnotch animation, tight scripting, and an incredibly atmospheric feel that accurately captured the uniquely Filipino sensibility of the show. 

In the show, as in the comics, Trese (voiced in the English dub by Shay Mitchell and in the Tagalog dub by Liza Soberano) is a private detective who investigates, with the help of her supernatural muscle the Kambal and her trusty man Friday Hank , crimes of a paranormal nature. More than being just an investigator, she is essentially a warrior-shaman, a "babaylan" of exceptional ability and, courtesy of her late father Anton, with extensive training in the arcane arts. She maintains a tenuous balance established by her father between the world of humanity and that of the many supernatural beings that live just beyond human sight. With the sudden uptick in horrific crimes perpetrated by denizens of the underworld, however, Trese fears that this fragile balance may soon be destroyed, 

I've already waxed lyrical about this show in a Youtube video but I still have other thoughts on this series that I didn't get to articulate on in the video, which was bit more free-flowing and extemporaneous than my written reviews tend to be. 

As an adaptation of the first six issues of the series, Trese works like a charm. Inevitable liberties may have been taken, but they are surprisingly few and none deviating in any substantial way from Budjette Tan's and Kajo Baldissimo's original vision, and the writing team captured the very best part of the comic: the incredible world-building.

I love the character of Trese, how she bears a terrible burden along with her responsibilities but isn't terribly emotional about it, until the weight of her burden starts to get too heavy. She's believably deadpan, but every now and again her very human fragility shines through. Both the writing and the animation work together wonderfully to bring this to life. More importantly, though, they introduce the viewer to Filipino folklore in one of the canniest ways possible: they tease it, bit by bit, episode by episode, and draw the viewer in with each new glimpse of this fantastical world and the creatures that inhabit it. 

My two beefs, however, are with the voice acting, particularly in the English track, and specifically with the Filipino accents, which, to my mind, worked on a 50/50 basis. Some of them were knocked right out of the park, but others came across as more Latin American than Filipino. Regardless of whether the actors' accents constitute their real-life Filipino accents in America or Canada, they owed it to authenticity to give genuine Filipino accents and not merely Fil-Am or Fil-Canadian accents. At least half of the cast got it right, but others rather notably didn't. 

This latter half, unfortunately, includes lead voice actress Shay Mitchell, who gave Trese her English voice. Mitchell is a capable actress and I thought she nicely captured Trese's inner strength and the conflict bubbling within her, but whenever she spoke Tagalog I basically cringed. She could get away with the relatively short phrases, but as the spells she recited got longer and longer her Tagalog made me shrink deeper into my chair.  All I can say here, as I did in my video review, is that she needs a full-time dialect coach, and not just the producer giving her notes, which, based on the "behind the scenes" special that Netflix aired, appears to be what happened. If she had a dialect coach for the first season, then she needs a better one next time, hopefully one from Manila and not LA.  

This quibble notwithstanding, I still enjoyed the series quite a bit.

I also enjoyed the Tagalog dub, which I watched on my second viewing, and I have to respectfully disagree with the critiques of Liza Soberano, who dubbed Trese in the Tagalog language version. She has widely been accused of being "wooden" but in truth, she was being true to Trese's deadpan nature, which dates all the way back to her appearances in the comics. I'm no Liza fan, and in truth I couldn't even listen to her speak during the "making of" special as I fast-forwarded through all her parts, but her voice acting was not a problem, nor was that of any of the other Filipino actors in the Tagalog dub.

What I did find problematic, though, was an abrupt and ridiculous exposition dump that took place in the first third of the very last episode, the kind of monologue that would put even some of the more exposition-indulgent Japanese anime to shame. The story, which had been moving along with a nice, brisk pace at that point ground to a halt, and in an oddly "meta" moment, the setting literally went from day to night in the course of the speech. It was not a shining moment for anyone involved. 

My issues with accents and last-minute exposition aside, though, I am very much a fan of this show and I dearly hope it has a future with Netflix, who are notorious for giving even popular shows the chopping block. The production value of this show is right up there with any other anime Netflix has produced, and it deserves to live to see another day.  

8/10

Netflix Does Superheroes: A Review of Jupiter's Legacy

created for TV by Steven DeKnight

from the comic books by Mark Millar and Frank Quitely

I have to be honest: I have mixed feelings about a lot of the work of famed comic-book writer Mark Millar. Apart from his early stuff for Marvel, including his phenomenal first run on The Ultimates which has explicitly been acknowledged as a huge influence on the Marvel Cinematic Universe in general and on The Avengers films in particular, and a yearlong run on Spider-Man that I genuinely enjoyed, his work has been somewhat hit-or-miss for me. I definitely had issues with the original  Civil War comics and I enjoyed the movie far more, and I have also had my share of issues with his original work, of which I have read a smattering, like Chosen , Supercrooks and Kick-Ass.  What irks about Millar's work is that too often, it feels like it's written primarily for the shock value, or is nothing more than shock for shock's sake. 

That's not always the case, though; some of his original work stems from his genuine love of the superhero genre that he grew up with, and feels like an attempt to put his own spin on it, for better or worse.

Jupiter's Legacy, the recently released Netflix adaptation of one of Millar's original creations, which, I'll wager, was created with either the big or small screen already firmly in mind, strikes me as one of the latter kind of original work. 

For eight episodes, showrunner Steven DeKnight and his team of writers and directors guide cast members of Josh Duhamel, Leslie Bibb, Ben Daniels and Matt Lanter, among others, through an engaging tapestry of stories that mix golden age superheroics and a more cynical, modern -day superhero narrative. 

Duhamel and Bibb play spouses Sheldon and Grace, better known to the world by their superhero aliases the Utopian and Lady Liberty, who, together with Sheldon's brother Walter (Daniels), his friend George (Lanter) and a couple of other people founded the superhero team the Union of Justice in the 1930s. Nearly a hundred years after they first received their superpowers, the couple, having aged more slowly than most people but having aged nonetheless, find themselves grappling not only with a resurgent supervillain threat but with their own somewhat difficult, super-powered children, son Brandon aka Paragon (Andrew Horton) who is eager to follow in his parents' footsteps but is somewhat headstrong about doing it his own way, and Chloe (Elena Kampouris), who has turned her back on superheroing altogether for the fast-paced,drug-fueled life of a supermodel. When a new type of ultra-violent supervillain kills members of their team and forces Brandon to do the unthinkable, Sheldon and Grace find themselves confronted with difficult choices on how to proceed, and Sheldon finds himself looking back to where it all began: in the Great Depression, when he and his brother Walter were struggling to keep their father's flailing steel company alive. 

I'll admit that the intertwining narrative of past and present was sometimes a chore to sit through, and that it isn't always smoothly handled, but all told, I sincerely liked this approach to superhero storytelling, not only marrying the Golden Age narrative with the more modern, darker take on the subject matter but making this marriage one of the central sources of conflict.

One of the main drivers of conflict in the story is the "code" of the Union of Justice, which really boils down to one simple rule: no killing. It's not the newest subject of debate in superhero storytelling; DC and Marvel have been pretty much doing it for years, but I really enjoyed the presentation of the characters' journeys from the Great Depression to nearly a century later. 

It also turned the narrative on its head a bit; rather than the 30s era superhero being deprived of his virtuous parents, Sheldon instead discovers that his late father, who killed himself when his company went belly-up, isn't quite the hero he imagined him to be, which makes his journey as the scion of a failed steel tycoon one of redemption rather than revenge. I appreciated that it was this journey towards becoming a superhero that shapes his values, which eventually form the Union's code. Duhamel's committed performance makes it work.  His code isn't born out of idealism, but out of the knowledge of what it means to live without a code, and I liked that. Duhamel, Bibb, Daniels and Lanter are at the heart of the story, and their synergy makes even the more out-there aspects of the narrative work, because they really give it a human core. 

Given that this is a TV series, the seams in the visual effects tend to show fairly often. The super-speed and flying effects often made me wince. The production value on the whole is decent at best, and certainly nowhere near the much slicker Netflix offerings like Altered Carbon, but considering how Netflix has spent big and lost before, I get where they're coming from.

Jupiter's Legacy is a long way from being one of my favorite superhero stories, but it is a welcome distraction in these times and something decent to pass the time until the stuff I'm really looking forward to, like Trese and Lupin: Season 2 finally hit Netflix. 

7/10

 

A Review of The Amazing Spider-Man: King's Ransom

 written by Nick Spencer

drawn by Patrick Gleason, Federico Vicentini, Roge Antonio

With Giant Size Amazing Spider-Man: King's Ransom , Nick Spencer has paid off yet another of his long-running storylines in his three-year run on The Amazing Spider-Man , and has done so in surprisingly fine style. After Spencer started out strong with his first year on this title, things kind of went off the rails with "Hunted," the difficult-to-read sequel to the seminal "Kraven's Last Hunt" story, and the meandering storyline of new-old character "Kindred."

With "King's Ransom" Spencer pays off two story threads he's had running since his first year on the series, namely Spider-Man's curious relationship with his roommate Boomerang, and Randy Robertson's relationship with the new Beetle, who also happens to be longtime Spidey foe Tombstone's daughter. Boomerang's quest for the tablet of life, a magical artifact capable of raising the dead, finally comes to a head, as does his strained relationship with the Kingpin, and Spider-Man learns some startling truths.

I suppose one could say the ending of Boomerang's story had an air of predictability to it, but I'll admit I didn't see it coming. What I do like was how logical and natural it felt in the course of things, and I'll avoid elaborating lest I spoil the plot for anyone interested. The Parker luck basically rears its head again, but in a way that makes sense and doesn't feel altogether gratuitous. Suffice it to say that this story is the most coherent writing I've seen from Spencer in a while. It's definitely an improvement over the bloated "Sins Past" and "Last Remains" storylines, and certainly stands head-and-shoulders above his Kraven saga. This story is relatively compact and pays off in a fashion that pretty much ties this story up,  

Helping Spencer along are his usual army of collaborators, with artists Patrick Gleason, Federico Vicentini and relative Spidey newcomer Roge Antonio sharing the art duties this time around. All three artists are quite notably talented, but I really miss the days when J. Michael Straczynski could count on John Romita, Jr. to draw all six issues of a storyline, or, more recently, when Jim Cheung drew all five issues of the "Clone Conspiracy" for Dan Slott. This business of rotating artists is particularly absurd when one considers that the culmination of the Boomerang/Kingpin saga was only six issues long, with none of those "filler" issues. I would love to see a full four to six issue storyline from ANY of the three artists who worked on "King's Ransom." In particular, Patrick Gleason's work stood out, and his rendition of Spider-man has vastly improved since he came on board this title about two years ago. Still, this story arc features some of the best art that the title has seen since Ryan Ottley left the book a short while back.

This is worth checking out; it's a decent read. 

8/10

Crapping on Holmes and Watson: A Review of Netflix's "The Irregulars" Series

 created for TV by Tom Bidwell

This is the first review of a television show I've written in the time of the pandemic, and even though I've binged hours' worth of Netflix programs, many of them old, this is the first time I've felt the need to really speak out about one. I've already reviewed a handful of their movies, but this is the first series that I've had particularly strong feelings about ... because it's a giant, stinking turd.

I'm departing from my usual practice of looking up the names of cast and crew on IMDB, save for series lead Thaddea Graham who plays Bea, whose performance, in my opinion is probably the sole redeeming factor of the series, and series creator Tom Bidwell, for the simple reason that I need someone on whom to pin this desecration. I just don't feel like naming anyone else. 

For the uninitiated, the "irregulars" are an unspecified group of street children who periodically appeared in Arthur Conan Doyle's "Sherlock Holmes" books and stories. They helped Holmes and Watson gather much-needed information on their cases because they could go places that the famed detective and his loyal colleague could not. The potential for stories of their adventures was there; a good writer could imagine all of the tales between tales that the irregulars could tell, how they helped Holmes solve this case or that.

Rather than fulfilling that potential, however, this series brings the titular "irregulars" front and center in the only way that lazy, incompetent revisionists know how: by pulling down their britches and taking a steaming dump on Sherlock Holmes and John Watson. 

It starts off well enough, the irregulars are a plucky bunch, consisting of street urchin Bea (Graham), her half-sister Jessie, their friends Billy and Spike, and, oddly enough, crown prince Leopold who sneaks out of Buckingham Palace to join their group after being smitten with Bea when she picks a fight with his bodyguard. It's an interesting enough set-up, and the presence of a royal who conceals his identity among commoners, if a little bit hackneyed, creates a fair amount of intrigue.

When Watson recruits Bea and her crew to help solve mysteries, however, none of which have anything to do with Conan Doyle's stories, it all starts going horribly wrong. 

The mysteries center around a supernatural event that the characters dub "the rip" which refers a tear in reality, and deal exclusively in paranormal events. This deviation from the source material, which instantly identifies this series as a period-piece knock-off of Netflix's own hit show  Stranger Things, was a bit eyeroll-inducing, but it was not the real problem.

No, the real problem is that almost from his very first appearance, John Watson is depicted as a thoroughly unlikeable, antagonistic character who spends the majority of the series' eight episodes butting heads with Bea. He becomes an obstacle the characters must overcome, and even late in the story when he is supposedly redeemed, it seems very clear that the writer just doesn't like him. 

Holmes is depicted as an over-the-hill drug addict who spends most of the series laid up in bed in a drug-addled stupor, occasionally vomiting, but given that it's not that far-removed from his addiction as depicted not just in the books but in other, more faithful adaptations like the BBC series written by Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss and starring the incomparable Benedict Cumberbatch, it's not that far a stretch. 

The vilification of John Watson, however, is basically unforgivable, and while I was almost willing to recommend this series on the basis of the appealing female lead in the form of Bea and her plucky crew, the fact that the writer needed to trample on existing property to make their leads stand out means this series deserves a hard pass. 

4/10

  

  

Nick Spencer's Long Game: A Late Review of "Last Remains" (Mild Spoilers)

 written by Nick Spencer

illustrated by Patrick Gleason, Mark Bagley and various

This is my first post on this site in over a year, which strikes me as somewhat ironic considering that for several months  of that year I was on lockdown with little else to do but write.  I guess the pandemic has done an even bigger number on me than I thought.

Having just finished reading the last issue of "Last Remains" or Amazing Spider-Man #57, I have to weigh in on this saga considering how long I've been waiting for Nick Spencer to finally pay this particular story thread off.  It's been equal parts disappointing and intriguing, I must say.

The first major story thread Spencer paid off was "The Hunted" nearly two years ago, in which Spencer and a gaggle of artists tried (and, in my opinion, failed) to craft a follow-up story to the legendary story "Kraven's Last Hunt," and more importantly, to undo the mistake that Marvel made of resurrecting Kraven some ten years ago.  It seems undoing editorial mistakes is something of a personal mission for Spencer.   In "Last Remains," he pulls at arguably the most controversial stories of the Spider-Man mythos over the last several years: the unmitigated disaster that was "One More Day." 

In this story, Spencer finally reveals the identity of the mysterious, supernaturally powerful villain, known up until this point only as "Kindred." He digs deep into Spidey's history, literally resurrecting the 80s villain Sin Eater to help Kindred fulfill his unholy mission, which, of course involves inflicting untold amounts of pain on Spider-Man, perhaps more than he has ever known. Kindred, after all, is not just any villain, but one whose hatred for Spider-Man runs deep because apparently, a decision Spider-man made has caused him great suffering. To get back at him, Kindred is willing to strike at just about everyone Peter loves. 

The revelation of Kindred's identity was, I confess, slightly disappointing because the character in question was not someone who had been out of circulation for years but who had been quite visible during Dan Slott's run, just before Nick Spencer took over.  

What makes the story intriguing is how Spencer seems to have intimately tied it into the events of "One More Day," a story dreamed up by the idiots at Marvel editorial for the express purpose of "unmarrying" Spider-Man without "aging" him through something as mundane as divorce.  Now, it seems, that Peter's decision to sell his marriage to the devil (which sounds even stupider now than when Joe Quesada and his gaggle of morons dreamed it up) has had a severe unintended consequence for a major member of his supporting cast.  While "Last Remains" does not deliver the payoff I had hoped for, it features, in at least some of the issues, some of the stronger writing Spencer has shown since he took over this book two and a half years ago.

Like "The Hunted" this story is quite sprawling and takes place over two story arcs, including a prologue featuring Sin Eater. It also features "LR" supplement issues.  I haven't really been keeping count, but all told, I'd estimate that the story covers about twenty-four issues or so.

Of course, that's where the problem lies; having to stretch out a story over such a long period of time inevitably diminishes the effectiveness of Spencer's twists and turns, and the fact that so much is left unresolved also dimishes the effectiveness of the story.  Also, the fact that Spencer still hasn't retconned "Sins Past" out of existence continues to irk me. 

While the crew led by Humberto Ramos did a disastrous job trying to recapture the moodiness of "Kraven's Last Hunt," this story, led by relative newbie Patrick Gleason and long-time Spidey veteran Mark Bagley, has a stronger, more consistent look even though the story spans as many issues as it does. In particular I rather liked the style of newcomer Federico Vincentini, who illustrated the supplemental "LR" issues and who deserves to be seen more.  Still, having at least three different art styles weave "Last Remains" has a jarring effect on the storytelling.

I miss the days when Spider-Man writers could tell stories in four to six issues.  Some of the very best Spider-Man stories were six-issue affairs, whether it's J.M. DeMatteis and Mike Zeck's "Kraven's Last Hunt" or J. Michael Straczynski and John Romita Jr.'s "Coming Home."  I could even get into stories that lasted eight to twelve issues, but what mattered was how the storytellers managed the pacing.  Suffice it to say, I am not a fan of this super-sized, "event" approach to storytelling, even though I get its commercial appeal, because when stretched out over too many issues, stories inevitably suffer.  

What's sad, for me, is the fact that Spencer knows how to tell short and sweet stories. He knows how to tell four to six issue stories. These are not only easily digestible, but they also manage maximum impact without meandering, which is something that has happened time and again withn these mega-arcs, first with "The Hunted" and again with this story arc.

I'm still sticking around, though, because I really want to see how this all pays off in the end, and in that, I suppose, Spencer's writing is ultimately successful. 

6.5/10

  

A Refreshing New Take on an Old Trope: A Review of Miles Morales: The End

written by Saladin Ahmed
drawn by Damion Scott
colored by Dono Sanchez-Almaral

Since Marvel started publishing its post-apocalyptic "The End" books at around the turn of the millennium, I've picked a couple of them up, namely the Punisher one-shot and a reprint of the wildly popular Hulk one-shot. I had no interest in following the others, which seemed less like canon and more like the bleakest vision possible that the writer could imagine for that particular character. In terms of tragic characters like Hulk and Punisher, the endings crafted for them by Peter David and Garth Ennis, respectively, felt quite appropriate, and while the endings were exceedingly bleak, as someone who grew up with Mad Max and other works of fiction set after the imagined apocalypse, I was okay with that. Also what else could one expect from a book with "The End" on the cover?

When I picked up Miles Morales: The End, therefore, I was somewhat stunned by what I actually saw, and even more so by th3e fact that despite a radical departure from some (but not all) of the usual tropes of a "The End" story, it actually worked.

So, like all "The End" stories, MMTE takes place in a post-apocalyptic setting. Here, the world has been overrun by what are only described as "germs," and few places have been spared. One of them, fortunately, is Brooklyn, where a diverse community manages to thrive in an environment that has been, through the efforts of Miles Morales and the late Ganke Lee, been rendered impervious to the germs. Even though Ganke has long since given his life for the community, an aged Miles now presides over it as mayor, with Ganke's daughter serving as his right hand. Even living in the apocalypse, however, doesn't get Miles' spirits down, though the group of white supremacists known as One America emerge and pose a threat to the peace that Miles and Ganke have sacrificed much to obtain.

As "The End" stories go, this was one surprisingly brief compared to the other two I'd read, but was an enjoyable read just the same, and, oddly enough, managed to give a new flavor to such stories with Miles' inexhaustible optimism as conveyed by the script and Damion Scott's energetic illustrations, ably supported by Dono Sanchez-Almaral's vibrant colors. Ahmed, who's been writing the Miles Morales monthly book for over a year now, wisely eschews some of the more overused tropes of the "The End" subgenre and gives us a lead character who refuses to lose hope in the face of an unrelentingly bleak situation, to the extent that, even though plot-wise, the story plays out like a "The End" story tends to do, the overall tone of the book feels like something altogether new.

This was a pleasant read that should go down fairly well as a "The End" story with its own distinct identity.

8/10