All good things must come to an end, and this series is no exception. It’s been quite a wild ride, and I will try to break down the issue, and the series, in this spoilerific post.

THAT’S RIGHT, SPOILERS!

If you don’t want to know what happens to Danny, his family and the whole cast, then finish the series first. Having said that, this is a confusing series, and issue, so take these words with a grain of salt. Art can be interpreted many ways, and the end of this disturbing and fourth-wall-breaking series could be interpreted a couple of different ways.

This is a giant-sized double issue that retails for $7.99, and it’s well worth the price if you’re a fan of the series. It’s chock-full of the full-page, psychedelically horrific art that I’ve come to expect and love from Sorrentino. Do you have to turn the book upside down at points to read it? Absolutely. Are the backgrounds littered with Easter eggs and callbacks to previous issues? Of course. While those could be considered gimmicky in another artist’s hands, the sheer power and drama of the art in this series make Sorrentino’s choices seem bold and fresh. To break new ground in art, you have to be grounded in the basics first, and Sorrentino is flexing every artistic muscle he has to great effect.

That line art would still be impressive, but not as impactful, if not for the colors from Dave Stewart and the lettering/design work of Steve Wands. A lot of ground-breaking stuff from Wands in the lettering in particular, which is an absolute necessity for modern horror books. And these huge splash pages would be nothing without Stewart’s creepy and intense color palette.

Lemire, for his part, wraps up the series pretty much in the manner that I expected. All of the time travel threads come together, and the five heroes are able to confront the deep evil that lies at the core of all realities. There are a couple of big reveals, the main one being that the Black Barn is what was actually keeping this evil contained. So by destroying it earlier, they were actually playing into its hands. Whoops! Hard to tell what the right choice is when you’re violently being thrust into different dimensions, I guess. This causes a lot of turmoil for Danny of course, but he also resolves to fix this by rebuilding the barn! This leads to the final confrontation inside the barn, with none other than Norton, the man who originally created the machine that brings the creature forth. Norton is a True Believer, and defends his invention, but Danny does end up destroying it in the end.

We get a short coda, wherein everything seems to have returned to the beginning of the series, although presumably the outcome is different. This is kind of subverted with the final shot, which shows Danny grinning in that old familiar, evil way. So of course, everything is in doubt. It’s in doubt whether destroying Norton’s machine actually changed anything, or if this whole loop will just be repeated ad infinitum. And of course this is the conceit of all stories like this. Now I’ve only read through it once, as it came out, so I can and will probably pull new meaning, or maybe even a completely different interpretation of all this out of a second read-through.

This is absolutely a stunning piece of work, and can highly recommend you picking this up in trade form, or the inevitable hardcovers, prestige editions, etc… that will be released. It’s all available on Comixology as well, collected into 6 volumes.