Axiom's Edge Science Fiction and Fantasy

By Sam Christopher

Rick Remender’s dystopian vision of a world where “Superman” (called here Astonishman) wipes out three billion of the world’s population in 1962 and renders one person in 10,000 of the survivors super-powered ends this week with The End League #9. Apparently, Remender has an exclusive contract now with Marvel and is wrapping up all his work with other companies—which means that, The End League being a creator-owned book, we unfortunately won’t be seeing any more of it in the near future; however, the author has said he would like to return to the End League-verse at some point, so that’s hopeful. (I’m also now wondering about whether or not he could take the title to Marvel if he wanted. I don’t know how these contracts are set up; there may be a certain amount of exclusivity to Dark Horse that has to be followed or bought out.) In the world of The End League, Astonishman’s astonishing faux pas in the capture and destruction of an alien ship causes the Earth to be knocked from its axis and be flooded with radiation that causes most of the death and subsequent super-powers mentioned above. And I understand that sounds much more scientology than scientific but this is comics logic, and rather cool when you think about it: most of the characters in the series are based loosely on DC folks whereas this origin—through radiation—is more early Marvel than anything else. (And now I’m wondering if that was intentional or if it just seemed natural to Remender to do it that way.)

This ish’s story neatly wraps up the series with a twist at the end. The kind of twist one needs to make a Mobius strip, in fact. Codename Black has taken precisely the wrong person to Mjolnir (Thor’s hammer, for the uninitiated), although how this clown can wield it is beyond me (yes, that’s a clue). It becomes a question for all, as CB works a little mind-game all his own and ends up… well, you just need to read it, along with the rest of the series if you haven’t. It was very good, and now that it can be read as a self-contained graphic novel hopefully they’ll put the whole thing out in tpb form so those who missed it can enjoy.

If you like Irredeemable and/or The Mighty and/or Squadron Supreme—I think that’s a nice cross section—you should check out The End League. Issues 1-4 are out in a trade and 5-8 are supposed to be collected in June of next year (now _that’s_ planning ahead). We can only hope that Dark Horse will see fit to move up that final collection’s release date and add the final 40 pages to it—cover to cover, literally, with no ads.

See also Sam Christopher’s review of The End League #1-6