Joe the Barbarian #7

Written by Grant Morrison
Art by Sean Murphy

In the two and a half months since the last issue of this comic came out, I thought I'd lost interest.  I'd been enjoying Morrison's riff on the old CBC show The Odyssey (which might not be an inspiration, but the parallels are clear), but was starting to find it a little drawn out.  When I saw this issue finally showing up in my pull-file, I expected to be underwhelmed.

Instead, I quickly got back into Joe's story, as he and the various denizens of Playtown (more on whom momentarily) face off against King Death's forces, Joe reaches the Fountain of Life (ie. the soda in the fridge), and then has to make some hard choices about what he does with it.  The pacing of this issue is excellent, and I appreciate some of the more bizarre asides (like the blue crabs).  Now I'm eagerly looking forward to the last issue.

Murphy's art is as great as it's been throughout this series.  The big kick in this issue comes from seeing which DC, Star Trek, Transformers, and other characters get the Playtown treatment and show up in the comic, albeit slightly altered to avoid copyright issues.  There's a lot to look at with this comic, and it's worth reading through it slowly to absorb all the details.