REVIEW: Past Aways #9

Dark Horse brings us Past Aways #9, by Matt Kindt, Scott Kolins, and Bill Crabtree. This the finalÂ issue and it is hauntingly beautiful as Matt makes you ponder your own mortality. Aided with the artistic talent of Scott and Bill, I would recommend picking up this book to anyone.

Matt explodes into the start of this issue and slams his readers on the side of a glass pyramid. Impending doom, and the light time travel humor, was the perfect tone to end the series on. And the dialogue is great, but this is nothing new from Matt. He always does a fantastic Â job of keeping every character multi-dimensional and unique to the book. That being said, however, whenever he uses character names within the dialogue, it feels a bit out-of-place.

One thing that is almost unique to Matt, as a writer, is his attention to detail. His in-depth world building skills always bubbles to the surface, summarizing people, places and things. If he isn“t filling the back of the cover with art and design comments, then he finds opportune moments in the story to add blurbs about the world he has created. Which, as a reader, is incredibly fun, pulling you deeper into his mind.

And Scott is just as amazing, in this issue, with his art. His sequential’s are almost seamless, and his Psuedo-God Techno-graph creature is bold. Scott reminds me a lot of Mignola in this sense. My one complaint in his department, though, was the lack of backgrounds. Not that you can add a ton of detail to an icy tundra, but pure white and blue backgrounds get boring after a few pages.

Lastly, Bill“s work on the color was very sporadic. At times it would be clean and concise. Using good color theory to draw the reader’s attention and capture the tone of a scene. And other times, it just felt splotchy. Towards the end, the shading became muddled; it felt as if the rendering was rushed.

All together though, Past Aways #9 was a great read and a very dark conclusion to the story. Â Matt did a good job of wrapping things up, and Scott did just as good of a job interpreting Matt“s script. If you are in the market for reflecting on your own mortality, or just want a dark time caper, this is the book for you. I am buying this issue for the last eight pages alone. I give Past Aways #9, 4 out of 5 stars.

[yasr_overall_rating size=”large”]

Writer:Â Matt Kindt
Artist:Â Scott Kolins
Publisher: Dark Horse Comics

Author Profile

Dylan Hicks

I just graduated from MSUD with my BAS in Mathematics. I live in a small 1 bedroom apartment with my girlfriend, and our two cats. I work full time for NTIA-ITS as a Computer Scientist. All I really do is engineer mathematical models and write code all day. I took up this second job at Comic Crusaders as a way to become more involved with the comic book community. Since I was a child I have loved comics. I grew up reading Spider-Man, Shi, New Mutants, Spider Woman, and Gen13. As I got older, however, my tastes started to shift from almost exclusively Marvel to various independent labels. Now I read a huge variety of comics: Valiant, Black Mask, Aspen, Avatar, Image, Dynamite, Boom, Aftershock, etc.. If anyone wants to know, my favorite publisher, hands down, is Valiant.
I am also working on writing a few comic books myself. I have about 4 ideas in the fire, but only 1 of them is really getting anywhere; I have 6 of the 10 books finished. In addition to writing, I am also a practicing colorist. If you want to checkout any of my writing samples, or coloring samples, please check out my DeviantArt and let me know what you think.
dirtgrubdylan.deviantart.com.
Some more about me? I love black metal and video games. I usually spend most of my time hanging out with my girlfriend. We have been together for 6 years, so at this point she is basically my best friend. But when I am not with her, I get together with my friends to drink some beer and play some Magic, the Gathering. And, as pretentious as this is, I am also working on starting my own engineering firm. So that involves me reading a lot of textbooks on Mathematics and Computer Science.
So yeah, if you have made it this far thank you very much! I am crazy excited to start my career in writing. Let's see what I can do with this.