Red Mass for Mars #4

Written by Jonathan Hickman
Art by Ryan Bodenheim

In the year and one month since the last issue came out, I've managed to completely forget what was going on in this book. 

This issue has the heroes of Earth fighting against the alien horde (looking at my post of a year ago, they are called the Hun-Du, not that you would know this from reading this issue).  There is a black hole bomb, and a God Gun, all of which sound like the types of things one would see in Hickman's Fantastic Four run.  There are also a couple of flashbacks, but they don't add much to the proceedings I felt.

Really, this issue is a big disappointment.  I liked the first three quite a bit, and could have managed to read this as just a big epic ending if the books had come out in any sort of reasonable stretch of time, but at this late date, the whole thing feels a little like Hickman has forgotten his original intent, or has since used a similar idea elsewhere, so he just blows stuff up and kills people instead.  It's a let-down.

On the positive side, Bodenheim's art is wonderful, and more or less worth buying the comic for.  I would still recommend that people read this in trade, as the beginning was excellent; just don't expect a great ending.