Jennifer Blood #36 Review

By Harrison Rawdin on Wednesday, February 5th, 2014

The end of her time has come, but is it worthy of your attention? Read on to find out.

The official description from Dynamite:

FINAL ISSUE!!! Seriously wounded, betrayed, and captured, Jen faces her ultimate challenge… But an unexpected ally brings renewed hope, and she discovers that – maybe – there could be one final chance for something she has long believed to be impossible: Redemption.

It’s been a hard road for our tough as nails protagonist. The creative team for better or worse gives us something that feels like a proper conclusion even as it stumbles a bit along the way. Nonetheless this is one finish-line that we all cross. So by all means set the mood: grab a pint, find a quite corner, sit back, relax and enjoy what you’re about to experience.

Mike Carroll pens the script and the final author for this title focuses strongly on our main character. He may not have been the man that birthed this power house, but he’s the one that gets to put her journey to rest. I know fans will be wondering the big questions: does she live? Will she go to prison or hit the road with her kids? Are we about to learn a lesson in balance? It would be wrong to dismiss any of these because once the book gets rolling I honestly had no idea which path it would take. And to the author’s credit he gave this jaunt strength that only suffered from a few bouts of pacing issues caused by an overabundance of narration. To sum up: he ends it right but not perfectly.

The final stack of pages from Kewber Baal are solid from the first panel to the final page. We see worthwhile character renditions accompanied by exquisitely realized backgrounds. Considering all that the text asks of its illustrator, I was amazed at how versatile he turned out to be. That’s not to say that I didn’t anticipate that the end result would be lacking or even inconsistent with what we’ve seen before, but rather it was better than I honestly expected. Each sequence was handled with grace and candor which, minus a few fluctuations, gave me room to be enamored by it.

Jennifer Blood #36 is the end of a title that’s I’ve enjoyed immensely. It’s not perfect but, at the moments which count this release delivers on the goods. Recommended.

4/5

S#!T Talking Central

Spibmeister

Really? I thought it was a pretty disappointing ending, because none of those big questions are really answered. It seemed like it was all buildup for a new arc, but then it just ends really abruptly and vaguely. Sure she makes a big important decision in the end there, but what does it mean for her? Is she going to go find other criminals to hunt? Kill herself? Go into hiding and try to become a normal citizen again? We’ll never know. and SPOILERS AHEAD (barely, but someone will surely be mad otherwise) the rationale for leaving Andrea there alive in the car, still wanting revenge and right next to the house, seemed really flimsy too. It felt to me as if the creative team was just told after they were 4/5 of the way done with the issue that it was now the last issue and just had to throw together as much of a wrap up as they could in those last pages.
- Harrison Rawdin
  
  Hey Spibmeister,
  For me the logical closing point was when our anti-hero finally decided to stop killing. There are questions left up in the air and there could have been more time spent on the rationale but ultimately I felt like it fit the narrative of the series while leaving it open for a potential continuation if DYNAMITE wants to revisit down the road.
  - Spibmeister
    
    Sure that was an important decision and that’s what made it fall flat for me because it came about out of nowhere in the span of 2 panels or so with such a brief and vague explanation. Like I said though, I think they probably just got cut short unexpectedly. I don’t blame the creative team. They did an excellent job up until then.