E is For Extinction #4

By Chris Burnham, Dennis Culver, Ramon Villalobos and Ian Herring

E for Extinction has been a pretty good mini-series so far. While it has really gotten almost no hype, the first three issues were well done and Chris Burnham and Ramon Villalobos did a fine job of capturing the essence of the times. As we move into the final issue, all bets would appear to be off and we will be left with another Secret War tie-in that finishes months before the actual series is anywhere near over.

Chris Burnham gets a little help writing this final issue from Dennis Culver. Without being too sure where the help came in this issue, he probably should have just written it himself. This issue suffered from moving way too fast. The series wraps up so quick you may have to read this last issue again. Aside from that, the ending here seems similar to X-Men the Last Stand, which everyone openly admits is a worthless piece of film. Burnham and Culver had a chance to do something really cool with this series and ended up ripping off the worst X-Men movie ever made. There is also a big psychic battle in this issue, and to be honest, it’s a little played out, as it’s happened in several other titles recently. It would have been nice to see a more original approach to ending this series, but it just didn’t happen. This issue will leave you a little disappointed.

The pencils this issue are handled by Ramon Villalobos with colors by Ian Herring. Ramon Villalobos should get some credit for mimicking the style of Frank Quietly. In this series he has done a great job of capturing that look of the book when it launched. Having said that, there are definitely a ton of panels that could have been a little better. There are some nice panels here as well, like Jean Grey getting mentally ripped in half or Logan slaughtering people he’s already killed. Beast continues to be a problem for Villalobos to draw. In almost every panel he looks very odd, or his face is too long. The colors by Ian Herring are good as usual. His tones capture the color palette that Quietly used on his run. Herring has definitely been a bright spot on this series.

This is a disappointing end to a promising series. The first three issues were interesting, but unfortunately pacing problems and a bad ending ruin this issue. The art was serviceable, but could use a bit of improvement in some areas. Overall this is a series that will fly under the radar and probably be forgotten.