The Earth has less than 24 hours, but not everyone is going to make it off the planet. Your Major Spoilers review of Last Flight Out #1 from Dark Horse Comics, awaits!
LAST FLIGHT OUT #1 (OF 6)
Writer: Marc Guggenheim
Artist: Eduardo Ferigato
Colorist: Marcelo Costa
Letterer: Diego Sanches
Editor: Kyle Higgins
Publisher: Dark Horse Comics
Cover Price: $3.99
Release Date: September 8th, 2021
Previously in Last Flight Out: With Earth rendered uninhabitable, humanity has chosen to evacuate to the stars. But with just twenty-four hours left until the last ark-designed to evacuate Earth’s residents-leaves forever, its designer’s estranged daughter goes missing.
CLOCK’S TICKING
Last Flight Out #1 starts in 2031 with Ben Caewood’s daughter being born while he works in his lab. Things then jump a couple of years and his wife and daughter are in an accident that kills Ben’s wife. Things then jump forward to 2055 on the eve of the launch of the final ship that’s taking the last of the humans off of earth, although there is a large group who believe the earth dying is a hoax. He’s informed that his daughter is still in Chicago and not anywhere near a launch location. He tells the leader of the UN that he’s going to find his daughter and she informs him of a special forces unit that she’s been keeping secret and she assigns them to help him. As the team flies to Chicago things begin to malfunction with their plane and they go down with some of the team members not surviving. Ben and the team then begin the walk to Chicago.
HIGH TENSION PREMISE
Last Flight Out #1 introduces the readers to a premise that immediately has tension and high stakes. While the idea of leaving an inhabitable Earth isn’t an original one, it does function as a good background scenario to keep things moving. Also, the allusions to some of the current real world issues concerning science denial is done in an entertaining way, while also being a bit unnerving in it’s plausibility. After that though, things start to become less functional. First off, the main character’s actions are incredibly cliched. Between him missing his daughter’s birth, to being at work while his wife died, to passing his daughter off to nannys, it was as if his characterization was put together from the “How To Build A Distant/Negligent Father Handbook” The cliches don’t stop there as we’re introduced to the military team who are all very macho and gruff. They even have a silly acronym line that’s akin to every “FUBAR” quote out there. This then leads to another tired plot device of the grizzled war veteran being at odds with the brainy science guy, for really no established reason other than the fact that they were asked to go on this mission.
GETTING THE MOST OUT OF THAT ONE FACE
There are moments where the art of Last Flight Out #1 really shines. Those moments are specifically the wide shots establishing the size and look of the big spaceships that are supposed to take people off the planet. Unfortunately, that only happened a couple of times. Other than that most of the art is focused on faces and that’s where the issues come in. There is one expression in this comic: A slightly distressed and bewildered heavy eyelid gaze, and everyone has it.
BOTTOM LINE: A GOOD PREMISE FILLED WITH TROUBLED PIECES
Last Flight Out #1 is a tense issue with high stakes tied to its imposed time limit. It’s just about everything else that doesn’t really work here. The main character is cliched personality deficient and the military characters are cast from the most featureless generic soldier mould that they could find. This mixed with stilted artwork leaves this issue coming off as lifeless and overly reliant on the non-character story elements to carry things. 2 out of 5 stars
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Last Flight Out #1
Last Flight Out #1 has a tight and well defined set of conflicts and stakes. These are not enough to make up for the cliched characterizations and interactions.
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Writing4
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Art4
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Coloring4
