Torn between a good life and a good night’s sleep, Callie will push herself to the limits for her biggest heist ever. Your Major Spoilers review of Heartthrob: Season 3 #4 from Oni Press awaits!

HEARTTHROB: SEASON THREE #4

Writer: Christopher Sebela
Artist: Robert Wilson IV
Colorist: Nick Filardi
Letterer: crank!
Editor: Zack Soto
Publisher: Oni Press
Cover Price: $3.99
Release Date: May 6, 2020

Previously in Heartthrob: Season 3: After her face-off with Mercer, Callie is licking her wounds and hiding out from the FBI circling ever closer. Her friends want her to walk away and enjoy her remaining years, her gut tells her to cut her losses, but her heart figures out how to hurt Mercer the most. Torn between a good life and a good night’s sleep, Callie will push herself to the limits for her biggest heist ever.

“AND I’M GOING TO MAKE IT HURT.”

We open in the bedroom of a stranger, where Callie absolutely shouldn’t be, and the first page of the issue is five different scenarios of what might have happened… We then see what DID happen, as she holds a gun to the head of the man behind her problems. She even lights up a cigarette (which is what really bugs him, thanks to his recent heart/lung transplant) as she explains that she’s here to tell him about how much she’s about to mess up his life. When he pulls his own gun, it becomes clear that the movie moment isn’t exactly as she hoped. First of all, her gun isn’t real, leading to Callie fleeing the scene in dramatic fashion. She goes to ground, seeking out her friend Kim to help her scout out a bank vault, then parties well into the night as she puts together the next steps: Callie is going to go out with a bang and take as much of Mercer’s money with her as possible. Of course, that may change if, say, she finds out that she’s not actually dying…

IN THE MIDDLE OF SOMETHING DRAMATIC

This issue has a lot going for it in terms of story and dialogue, and I particuarly enjoyed the partying sequence and all it tells us about our main character. The final page reveal that she actually has a meaningful plan to rob the bank (albeit one that reminds me of a heist in ‘Grand Theft Auto V’ makes for a cool cliffhanger, but there’s just something missing here. As someone who reviews individual issues, I occasionally run across a book like this that catches my attention with good art (especially the visualization of Callie’s bad mood as a hurricane following her around) and cool characters that just isn’t a complete chapter, and it does affect my enjoyment of the issue. I’m interested in going back and checking out the first three issues of Season 3 after reading it, but I think that this book was written as one big story rather than five seperate and discrete issues.

BOTTOM LINE: I LIKE IT, BUT I FEEL LIKE I’M MISSING SOMETHING

That’s not a fatal weakness, though, and Heartthrob Season 3 #4 is mostly successful in the story that it wants to tell, with the art delivering on both subtle moments and big action pieces (Callie sliding down a bannister as she makes her escape, followed by bullets is gorgeous) with a story that really makes me want to see what has gone before, and even if it feels like I walked in on the middle of a conversation, it’s worth a better-than-average 3 out of 5 stars overall. It’s definitely the kind of book that would make a good television series and/or movie, and I’m interested in seeing how things wrap up next time around.

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