Issue: Irredeemable #7
Release Date: October 7, 2009
Writer(s): Mark Waid
Artist(s): Peter Krause
Cover(s): Gene Ha and Art Lyon, Dan Panosia, Jeffrey Spokes
Colors: Andrew Dalhouse
Letterer: Ed Dukeshire
Publisher: BOOM! Studios
Seven issues in, and Irredeemable continues to be one of the only titles I look forward to reading each month. I’m pretty sure the definition of “awesomesauce” is this comic.
Picking up right where the last issue left off, Charybdis is being manhandled by Tony and what’s left of the Paradigm is still standing dumbstruck in the Norman Bates-esque school room Tony’s got set up in his citadel. They get attacked by Encanta (the villain Tony abducted back in issue 3) because girlfriend is seriously messed in the head now. I guess she didn’t have the stomach to play-act with Tony. Meanwhile, Bette’s still pretending she wasn’t Tony’s usual party favor and not pulling it off at all. Let it go, Bette. Everyone knows you’re a floozy now (and your god husband is going to crap bricks when he wanders into that room)!
Taking a break from tango lessons, Charybdis tells Tony how he figured out the secret behind the virus that killed all those kids and Tony fills in the extra details. Which was odd for Tony to do. I mean, yes, he is a villain at this point. However, he hadn’t done this level of chit-chat and explanation before rearranging someone’s face with their bowls. Turns out that Tony was somewhat responsible for what happened with those kids. With the pressure of having to be everywhere to save everyone all the time (and the greediness and ungratefulness of the “humans” he saved), Tony took a 10-minute break. On the moon. Where he couldn’t hear everyone. And that’s when things went bad for kids.
A lot of plot points from previous issues showed up to have some connection with what’s going on. Little things that seemed like throwaway comments actually mean something for the main plot. While it seems that Tony is for sure feeling bad about not only putting tech into the hands of someone hugely underqualified to handle it, but also for that action leading directly to the deaths of a large number of kids, I don’t think that’s the sole reason he flipped his lid. I still feel like it’ll be a number of things all crammed together. The more the story unfolds, the more I definitely feel bad for Tony. Crazy, I know. He killed and tortured and I’m actually empathizing with him in this issue!
However, the gold star goes to Charybdis who quickly shot to my Top 10 Favorite Comic Characters list by the end of this issue. Dude had a secret that was one of the best reveals of the title. I just hope it’s enough to buy him more time on this side of the ground.
Rating: 5 / 5 Stars
BOOM! Studios provided this issue to Fandomania for review.
