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A review by helpfulsnowman
Irredeemable, Volume 10 by Mark Waid
4.0
This is the end of the Irredeemable series.
There's always a lot of pressure on an ending to a long series. There's almost no way to make it work. People always cart out that old line about pleasing all the people all the time, but I honestly think that in ending a series it's pretty hard to really please ANYONE.
I've enjoyed the hell out of this series. It had its ups and downs, but ultimately I liked a good deal of the characters, felt like it went interesting and different places, and that it really did a nice job with the premise, which was that of a Superman-esque character who flips out emotionally and decides to basically destroy everything.
In the last 2 volumes we really get some great resolution with most of the main characters. There are very few who will go on unchanged, if at all, which to me signals that we just read a good story. We also get just enough of the back story near the end that we've been waiting for. So the ending also delivers in terms of letting us see the solving of most of the mysteries.
All-in-all, I have no real complaints about the ending, which sounds like small praise but is actually pretty big. These things are really easy to pick apart, and I don't really have much that I could see being different.
Also, I can see myself in the future using this series of a good example of why a limited series works. You can do whatever you want with it. People can die. The whole world can change, in fact, because you don't have to be constantly worrying about how you're going to return everything to status quo. If you write a story about the Joker, you always have to keep his inevitable return in the back of your mind. If you kill Superman, you have to do it in such a way that allows for his return and for him to overcome whatever killed him in the first place.
A limited series feels more like real life. Where things change for better or worse and we're left to deal with the actual consequences.
There's always a lot of pressure on an ending to a long series. There's almost no way to make it work. People always cart out that old line about pleasing all the people all the time, but I honestly think that in ending a series it's pretty hard to really please ANYONE.
I've enjoyed the hell out of this series. It had its ups and downs, but ultimately I liked a good deal of the characters, felt like it went interesting and different places, and that it really did a nice job with the premise, which was that of a Superman-esque character who flips out emotionally and decides to basically destroy everything.
In the last 2 volumes we really get some great resolution with most of the main characters. There are very few who will go on unchanged, if at all, which to me signals that we just read a good story. We also get just enough of the back story near the end that we've been waiting for. So the ending also delivers in terms of letting us see the solving of most of the mysteries.
All-in-all, I have no real complaints about the ending, which sounds like small praise but is actually pretty big. These things are really easy to pick apart, and I don't really have much that I could see being different.
Also, I can see myself in the future using this series of a good example of why a limited series works. You can do whatever you want with it. People can die. The whole world can change, in fact, because you don't have to be constantly worrying about how you're going to return everything to status quo. If you write a story about the Joker, you always have to keep his inevitable return in the back of your mind. If you kill Superman, you have to do it in such a way that allows for his return and for him to overcome whatever killed him in the first place.
A limited series feels more like real life. Where things change for better or worse and we're left to deal with the actual consequences.