Battle Chasers #12: The End of Martial Law

In the conclusion of this story’s arc, we find that there is a lot more story left that will be explored in the future with issue #13, although the date of the release seems to be uncertain. For an issue that is supposed to be a closure on a story arc, there really wasn’t a lot that was concluded. There are still questions about what happened with Garrison and his connection with the creature known as Wranneth, Gully is still waiting for an answer from his supposed half-brother if they really are family (and how he’s going to escape execution), and what Maestro still needs with Garrison. Although the deaths of a couple of characters could be argued as being conclusions to some of the story, it’s not nearly enough to be considered an end of an arc.

Overall the story was fine. In the previous issues the story felt like it moved forward in a way that made sense and progressed fairly well. This issue felt like it came to a sudden halt. To be fair, the story contains some final battles where characters died so it had to plant its feet somewhere in the ground to make that happen, but it felt like it wasn’t a full issue’s worth of story. We also finally got to see Gully and Calibretto again, which was good since they were not present in issue #11. But overall, it seemed like the story just sort of stopped, popped in teasers for the next issue, and was just a bit anticlimactic.

The artwork is wonderful here. The use of colors and lighting is mesmerizing, and the compositions were very well done. It is a bit disappointing, however, that Red keeps getting overly sexualized. For issue #10 it made sense as a way to show her personality and the tension between her and Garrison. #11 was a bit of a stretch in being gratuitous but still made sense. But in this issue, there’s a panel where her cleavage takes up most of the image, then another panel where she is laying in mud after being knocked down into the ground during a fight with her chest inflating the scene and her legs in a suggestive position. This is pretty much the epitome of oversexualizing a female character when she is drawn in such a way that forces her to be exploited in the story where it wasn’t necessary. It would be nice to have an issue where she’s just being a badass without having to show off her body in a sexualized way.