Issue: Irredeemable #12
Release Date: March 17, 2010
Writer/Creator: Mark Waid
Artist(s): Diego Barreto (pg. 1-11), Peter Krause (pg. 12-22)
Colorist: Andrew Dalhouse
Cover(s): Paul Azaceta and Andrew Dalhouse, Dan Panosian, Jeffrey Spokes
Letterer: Ed Dukeshire
Publisher: BOOM! Studios
Three things happened in this issue. One of those things literally made me choke on the soda I was drinking while reading it. I never saw it coming and it was fantastic.
One of the events that happened was what was left of the Paradigm being captured by what’s left of the military. Orian duped them pretty good on this one. I’m not sure if these guys falling for every trap can be attributed to the shock of The Plutonian turning out to be nuttier than a squirrel poo, the shock of all the death and fighting and losing they’ve been doing, or that they were just not that good at the super hero thing and everything really did rest on Tony’s shoulders. Any way you look at it, someone should have been suspicious that Orian, this heavy hitter who they couldn’t handle the last time they went up against him, wasn’t actually fighting them as much as he was just kind of standing around laughing at them. Everyone, with the exception of Survivor, is taken into custody. Survivor is whisked away to an alternate dimension by Orian.
The other thing that happened was that Bette’s secret that she knew how to stop Tony this entire time was revealed to the group. I understand the gravity of this revelation. Had she spoken up, they could potentially have saved millions of people. It was the reason she never said anything that was a “Milkawha” kind of moment for me. She claimed that it wasn’t to keep her affair secret, that it was that she didn’t want them to find out who the “real” villain was. Okay, I’m slow, so I need a few things cleared up for me on this one. One, did Bette sleep with Tony more than once? The way that issue read, I thought either that was a really fast burning candle or they were playing it like Lionel Ritchie (that would be “All Night Long” for you youngsters). Was this an actual affair, as in it was carried on over a span of weeks or months or whatever, or was this a one night stand? Clearing this up for me would help me out because I’m kind of feeling like Bette isn’t a proper villain right now. Weak and stupid, sure, but her explanation that she never said anything because she’s the villain doesn’t feel right. Unless it was going on for a while, after she got married, and she had intentionally been looking for a weakness of Tony’s to expose.
The thing that happened in this issue that really got me, that made me choke on my soda, was when Tony freaking nukes two of his foster siblings, leaving the third handicapped one alone, isolated from society, and basically to die slowly.
Oh. Em. Gee.
Look, I know the title is Irredeemable and all, but for some reason up until this point I was convinced that Tony would come back around. Yeah. I couldn’t believe they went there. I could see it coming, continued to talk myself out of thinking that’s where it was going, and then they totally went there. There’s no coming back, he really is irredeemable, and I cannot wait to see who takes Tony down and how they do it. It’s going to be an epic fight.
Rating: 4 / 5 Stars
