Thief of Thieves #27 Review


Last month teased a new direction – of sorts – for the series, so how well does Thief of Thieves #27 hold up? Honestly? Not so well. The core concept is still there, but much of the title seems to have been lost at the same time.

First, the official description from Image:

There’s a new thief of thieves running things…

Thief of Thieves_27

The big thing that bugs me, after reading through the issue, is the sense of pacing. This feels very much like an attempt to reroute things back to square one. The ending feels like such a forced starting point that the whole comic reads like a direct train from A to B. There’s no joy for storytelling and neither do any of the elements that made Thief of Thieves what it was – the crime tropes and bank heist elements – are there. If they’re present, they’re not very noticable… and that’s a problem.

A lot of this comes down to the writing. Andy Diggle clearly has a direction hes going with this, but there’s simply no supporting cast to warrant any interest. Celia, on her own, simply doesn’t have the same troubled charisma that the previous Redmond had. She’s always been a side character and her contiuned thrust into the lime light suggests an uncertainly with the cast and what to do with the very title itself.

Visually, however, the title looks as good as it ever did. That means we still have the wonderful, detailed pencils from  Shawn Martinborough and the colors from Adriano Lucas. And yes, Lucas still overdoes it on the blue and orange contrast. A new change in narrative could have been an opportune time to change that, at least.

In short, I don’t have much hope for the next few issues. Perhaps I just preferred the very early issues, but the last few chapters have seen the title go downhill, and Thief of Thieves #27 doesn’t look any different.

OUR RATING
3
  • + Still looks good
  • - Overuses blue and orange
  • - Streamlined writing
  • - Just not interesting

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