Sunday, October 27, 2013

365 Comics...296/297: Deathmatch #9 & #10 (2013)

Oh man, I was starting to get nervous.  My wife reported our LCS had run out of copies of issue #9 when she was picking up books that week in September and this month when issue #10 came out, once again, it was missing from the stands.  Likewise I visited a couple of my backup shoppes and they too were missing the issues.  I love this series and was seriously bummed that not only was I two issues behind but that those two issues were relatively unavailable.  A few weeks later though, lo-and-behold there they both are, sitting on the back-issue rack, one battered copy of issue #9 and two bent copies of #10.  I'll take 'em.  Not gonna be picky at this point.

With issue 9, we're down to 6 combatants and things are looking rather dire for the good guys.  Though we know a few of the secrets there's still the what-the-hell-is-really-happening mystery backburning.  Issue 9 brings up some surprising character revelations and shows us the final showdown between longtime rivals Dragonfly and the Cube.  At this stage, all of the character profiles have been completed so there's no bonus backmatter beyond the March Madness bracket breakdown showing who's left to face off against one another.

Issue #10, well, this one's got the most monolithic exposition drop of any issue so far (and in a 12-issue maxi-series that debuts an entirely brand new superhero universe with a rich background of stories and character dynamics and centering on 32 new characters, there's been a lot of exposition)... and even with that it STILL doesn't completely unfurl the mystery.  This is one of those stories that needs to be re-read in one lump sum, because with all of the twists, turns, double-turns and triple-turns it's hard to recall what the truth is and what the clues actually were.


What's with the little girl on the cover though?



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