Blaire must make a terrible choice: The fate of humanity or her friends’ lives? Your Major Spoilers review of Monster Planet #5 from Zenescope Entertainment awaits!
MONSTER PLANET #5
Writer: Joe Brusha
Artist: Sergio Ariño
Colorist: Maxflan Araujo
Letterer: Taylor Esposito of Ghost Glyph Studios
Editor: Dave Franchini
Publisher: Zenescope Entertainment
Cover Price: $3.99
Release Date: April 15, 2020
Previously in Monster Planet: As the clock ticks down to zero on the human race, Blaire Spencer is able to complete her mission and deliver the vampire Xavier Drake to her team of scientists. Unfortunately she had to leave her team to face certain death to do it. Now Spencer must choose between saving her friends, or the fate of humanity itself. Don’t miss the thrilling conclusion to Monster Planet!
AFTER THE VIRUS
We open at Iron Mountain, the East Coast base of operations for the survivors of humanity, holed up against the onslaught of reptilian monsters, all of whom seem to have been transformed by a virus. Fortunately, Sergeant Blaire Spencer has managed to procure a sample of blood (from one of the creatures, I think, but it’s never made quite clear) in the hopes of reversing the infection. Meanwhile, Michigan, Fort Mackinac is under siege, but thanks to a couple of friendly monsters whose presence is never addressed, is about to overrun by an entirely human force of bandits, the leader of which totally NOT Negan from ‘The Walking Dead.’ Violence ensues, one of the good guys is suddenly transformed into a werewolf/lizard hybrid creature, and all heck breaks loose. Somehow, Blaire arrives, with her guns blazing, de-monsterizing good guy Karl and proving that the cure works, and saving the day…
ELEMENTS OF ‘DAY OF THE DEAD’
This issue’s plotting makes very little sense to me The Iron Mountain locale is described as hundreds of miles away from Fort Mackinac, but scene transitions make it seem like Blaire makes it there immediately. There’s at least two time jumps in the Easterly portion of the story, but somehow it all takes place in the space of what seems like only a few minutes in Michigan. Clearly, it’s not all happening in the order that events are being presented, but after multiple readings, I’m still unclear how it would all actually have happened. The final page Nietzsche quote pushes the story over the edge from just a bit muddled to actively pretentious for me, leaving me very confused by what I’ve just read. The art has it’s moments, but all the characters hgave very elongated faces and bodies, which blunts the force of the monstrous transformations for me. Even though I don’t know why Karl is a werewolfazard, though, it’s a pretty impressive transformation page, but many of the combat sequences are very unclear and hard to follow.
BOTTOM LINE: A CHAOTIC FINALE
Monster Planet #5 wears its influences on its sleeve, with clear references to ‘The Walking Dead’, the works of Wes Craven and familiar horror/action movie archetypes all around, with art that gets the job done about 60% of the time, shaking out to a slightly below average 2 out of 5 stars overall. It’s not a terrible comic book, by any means, but there are a lot of things that could have used clarification and explanation for my tastes. I’d be interested in reading a collection of all five issues to see if it works as a final chapter of a longer tale, but this issue just doesn’t make for a successful single-issue reading experience.
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MONSTER PLANET #5
It's a big canvas and the strokes are painted very broad, but the ending is somehow both telegraphed and arbitrary and there are some problems with the art that effect comprehension... I liked some of this, but it needed a bit of editing.
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Writing4
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Art5
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Coloring4
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