Review: Undiscovered Country #18
[Editor’s Note: This review may contain spoilers]
Publisher:Â Image Comics
Writers: Scott Snyder and Charles Soule
Artists: Giuseppe Camuncoli, Leonardo Marcello Grassi
Letters: Crank!
Colors:Â
Reviewed by: Carl Bryan
Summary
New York Times bestselling writers Scott Snyder and Charles Soule team up with artists Giuseppe Camuncoli, Daniele Orlandini, and Matt Wilson to embark on an epic adventure in the brand-new ongoing series, UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY! “UNITY”
Undiscovered Country #18 – “POSSIBILITY,” Part Six Ladies and gentlemen, please be seated. Today’s speaker is about to give what is undoubtedly the most important speech ever composed, so please give him your full attention.
As the third arc of our story comes to a shocking close, we now present…Ace Kenyatta. Oh yes… The Devil hitches a ride.
Positives
Scott Snyder and Charles Soule’s lasting contribution to this series is CrossRoads Devil. I’ll leave it at that as he steals every frame of the comic page he is included. The suit…the guitar…the dangling cigarette.
The plot of this final issue is basically a blender of pop culture and history topics from a Trivial Pursuit game. This comic is pure chaos from start to finish. Soule and Snyder beautifully investigate different themes within their overall analysis of America. Undiscovered Country #18 is an in-depth discussion on American creativity and the stories of the past.
To juggle this amount of characters, provide context, keep the story afloat….this is a task!
Positives (even more accolades)
The art by Giuseppe Camuncoli and Marcello Grassi is fantastic and frenetic. They switch gears perfectly from past landscapes to current “undiscovered” parts of this new country that has been under wraps.
With Matt Wilson’s mostly white palette and Crank!’s lettering, this creative team is working hard to go across the entire US landscape to arrive at ….. well, I think a cure for the Sky virus. But again, it’s been a minute. Maybe it is now about survival, but one thing is for sure. The art is superlative!
NegativesÂ
This story started strong…very cinematic. In fact, the back of the book provides some context as to the journey of the idea. If so, it needs to wrap up in two hours as this series can play out like a mini-series on Netflix, given there are 13 territories we need to cross and we are just in three. That’s a lot of popcorn and soda to go through in a setting.
I was scared that we had jumped the shark. Turns out we did a somersault midair over the shark and apparently returned back to the story making sense. Creating music…the cover…not for this reader. However, introducing a playing card from George Washington’s deck and giving me a new villain in CrossRoad Devil. Awesome!
HOWEVER, this issue was wild. I could not follow the story as easily as past issues. The script needs to tighten up and we need to get a cure for that Sky Virus!
Verdict
If you use this issue as a jumping-off issue, whew! Good luck! This particular issue is a tangled story that you really need a scorecard to even keep up.  That being said, the authors did a great job of publishing a “letter” at the end that provides both context, as well as a “see you in April” as this comic is being developed as a movie. Not sure if the task of writing a screenplay and the comic is overwhelming, but this particular issue is very frenetic.
