Ruse #4 Review

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Simon and Emma are on the trail of Malcolm Lightbourne.  Can they stop him in time before he kills one of them or pull off an escape?

Ruse #4

Upon returning from the derby, Simon immediately retreats to his “think tank” to work out the pieces of how Lightbourne’s plan fits together.  After 24 hours, Emma opens the tank and Simon falls out dead!  However, Lightbourne this is nothing more than a Ruse (get it?).  Simon and Emma sneak their way to a cave that is kept clean, proving Lightbourne, as he was one of only a small group of people aware of the location of the cave, was indeed pulling the strings.  Lightbourne heads them off and when Simon reveals that his mentor understimated his “reach”, Emma helps bring the madman to his apparent death at the bottom of a pit.  It is then revealed that Queen Elizabeth herself is one of Simon’s agents and as payment for his services to protect the crown from the damning truth about Prince Albert’s gambing debts, the three agents who died from Lightbourne’s attack on Simon’s home are given a state funeral.

Mark Waid wraps up the revival of his Crossgen creation in fine fashion.  This issue, naturally, isn’t as steeped as the first three issues, but the conclusion is quite satisfying.  We do learn what Lightbourne’s ultimate goal is.  While the final confrontation brought out a bit of the villainous persona from Lightbourne, it’s still shown that he’s calculating and just a jerk.  Still the fun of this mini is in the characters.  Waid has created characters that are believably brilliant in Simon and Lightbourne, and just all around fun in Emma.  Even the slimier characters in this series are interesting and appealing.  That’s Waid doing what he does best – telling good stories with characters that you feel a connection to.

Mirco Pierfederici returns to the title after taking issue #3 off.  I so much more liked Minck Oosterveer’s style.  I’m not exactly sure what it is about Pierfederici, but it almost looks flat.  Not flat as in the art is bland, because it isn’t, and in most cases, it would work well.  I guess I see a bit too many two dimensional images.  The faces are well done, but it just looks like a flat surface as if there just isn’t enough depth in the images.

I hope Ruse returns again, but I was happy to get something after so long.  Kudos to Mark Waid for coming back after all this time and still showing that this series still has its place on the racks.

A COMIC BOOK BLOG RATINGProsConsSatisfying conclusion. It's easy to make us love these characters because it's apparent Waid loves them.Art has a flat quality to it that didn't really appeal to me for this particular series. Rating90%

Tags: Crossgen Comics Mark Waid Ruse

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