Comics! The Ray #4

The Ray #4

Jimmy Palmiotti and Justin Gray: writers
Jamal Igle: pencils
Rich Perrota: inks

The Solicitation
The final conflict between The Ray and the evil maestro who has been behind all his woes comes to a conclusion. Lucien will need to take his powers to an all-new level to defeat the evil Director and his reality warping abilities.

No preview available.

The Story
Well that was abrupt and weird.

Chanti gets the shot off and puts it right in the chest of our director villain dude. He's dying, the Ray offs the Transformer wanna-be things off in a fashion similar to a Resident Evil movie. Then the paramedics are all over the director guy while at the same time trying to get the Ray to back off. The Ray starts to cough blood and he's dying as well. Then we get the Ray deciding to try and do a light show to hypnotize the villain into altering reality to something different.

The rest is just a wrap of of the story and happy endings for all. Seriously. the Ray gets a second chance at meeting Chanti's parents for a first time and it goes really smooth. Chanti has a job with the director (promotions or something, couldn't tell, just the fact that the director was a client) and the Ray gets a call on something superhero related.

Then we take a turn for the  "I can't believe they went here" routine. When the Ray saves people from a hostage situation, in walks some black guy all Sam Jackson Nick Fury style and asking if the Ray wants to be a part of a special security team for Homeland Security. Seriously. The Avengers just got ripped off at the end of this comic. What is worse is that the Nick Fury character pointed out that the job pays more than being a lifeguard, and the Ray asks how he knows that. This just happened after he just about lit up an entire movie theater while in his civilian clothes.

So color me confused by the ending. I'm not sure why this comic went there, it was doing just fine on its own and didn't need to bring in this trick at the end.

The Art
Consistent throughout the whole series. Every character felt and looked real and not some bulked up superhero character. I enjoyed it and would continue to follow this artist in any other title that he works on.

The Cover
I swear that sometimes these little blurbs on the cover can just make the comic feel silly. "His greatest Enemy finally revealed?" Really? That just makes you laugh when you pair it with the Tron inspired outfit the villain has. Kinda weird that it looks like they are fighting inside a volcano. I wish that the Ray was used more as a light source for this cover to make him stand out a little. You do see some effort in trying to make it appear that way with the rocks here, but the bright colors of the lava drown that out.

Grades
Words: 7/10 - the worst for the series mostly because of the turn at the end. Such a shame, it was very enjoyable up to that point.
Pictures: 10/10 - nice. Will follow this artist to any other work they can get.
Recommend: Eh. For morbid curiosity to see how it ends, but it is something that is very skippable and slightly disappointing considering how the rest of the series went. Definitely not something for a first time ready to have, the rest of the series was much better than this issue.
Buy Next Issue: Can't. This is the final issue.

Previous Issues
The Ray #3
The Ray #2
The Ray #1