Luke Owen reviews the final issue of IDWs current Mars Attacks run…
The second story arc comes to a close as little Tommy Bailey and the Nova Viras continue their contributions to the war effort to devastating effect! See science and robot mayhem play out on a global scale! Don’t miss any of the action in this runaway hit series from John Layman and John McCrea!
As IDW get ready to launch their revived Dinosaurs Attack this July, their second story arc of Mars Attacks comes to an end in more of a whimper than an emphatic stamp.
I was very critical of this current story as it took far too long to get going and often went on pointless tangents. While I loved some of them (the mafia one in particular was excellent) it meant that Tommy Bailey’s storyline was only mentioned in passing and was often forgotten. Given that this run was based around him and his techy genius creations, Mars Attacks #10 ends in an incredible anticlimactic fashion.
It’s not a bad comic by any stretch of the imagination as the writing from John Layman is once again superb, but it just ends so abruptly. And even if you look at this run as Blyx’s story and not the humans, it still does’t make it a successful conclusion.
Blyx had his best moments with Raymond Delvechio in Mars Attacks # 7 & 8 and the series never topped those moments. That panel where Blyx finally guns him down was so powerful. He does have some good moments in this comic though as the lone surivivor against the Martian robots that have turned against their makers due to interferance from Tommy. But there just isn’t enough of it.
And that’s the most frustrating thing about this second story, it’s got so many good moments but it doesn’t have a good enough conclusion. I said in last month’s review that I felt the story was ending prematurley and it turns out I was right. It all boils down to this – I would have liked to have seen more.
Layman and his crew have done a pretty tight job on this Mars Attacks series and long may it continue, but they need to prep their stories out a little better next time so that we focus on the core issues rather than trying to tie up all the loose ends in the final issue. Mars Attacks #10 is really, really good – but it could have been better.
Luke Owen is one of Flickering Myth’s co-editors and the host of the Month in Review show for Flickering Myth’s Podcast Network. You can follow him on Twitter @LukeWritesStuff.
Originally published May 2, 2013. Updated November 6, 2019.
