Maxwell's Demons #2 was a flash-forward.

[thanekos]

#1'd introduced us to the genius Maxwell Maas, at the age of 10.

#2 opened well after that, on a woman traveling to the Mass.

' More idea than object, it draws the impetuous and the lost with an inexplicable gravity, the myths that surround it multiplying in epidemic frame.

' One such story goes that every living thing's greatest desire lies at its center in quantum superposition, an infinite intersection of possibility waiting to be viewed and collapsed into presence. '

The woman joined a line of would-be observers.

" Pilgrims! Supplicants! Welcome to the Road. Here begins your long journey to the Holy Mass! "





The Road met them with obstacles shadowy..



.. and solid.



Dezmil fell, next to the woman with the sword.



Maxwell Maas of the future (who's bald on top, and whose commemoratives include a company with his name on it and a fairly familiar-looking superhero costume) regarded her.



She raised her head.



" The Superculture will bring back my family. Will erase my failure.

" The murder of a god.. the destruction of my soul.. that was the price.

" A small thing, indeed. "



She couldn't take his hand: " This future.. is a nice place to visit. But I wouldn't want to live here. "

He couldn't offer her anything else, after some affable words.

" Leave - with your life. There is nothing else for you here. "

" No! I am Ya'el Blackstar-Breaker! I am Ya'el, seducer of Maw, Butcher Black Hole!

" Against the rock of my will I hammered a dark star into my horizon blade!

" I have ended world eaters and the armies of empires!



Ya'el was teleported away.



" There is, after all, so much further to go if we are to conquer death. "

' And so Maxwell Maas moves through his heavy home, alone again, and - '

Reality blinked.

" The spatial surgeons are trying to cut out my little reality patch again.

" Don't worry, Freddy. " he said to the mouse on his shoulder. " It should be easy enough to fix. And only one witness, too. "

He sent one of his orbs to the loose end that was C'rass Novuh's servant.

" ' The future's a nice place to visit..



The boy's body tumbled backwards.



(He was nice enough to fix her black hole sword.

Also, he's echoing a warning Ya'el received on her way to the Ma(a/s)s.

Pagecount's just under 8 of 24.

Writing's Deniz Camp, art's Vittorio Astone, and letters're Aditya Bidikar.

Publisher's Vault Comics.)

Comments

[silverhammerman]

Another really good issue. It’s got action, cool ideas, and even some great lettering. It is also just the Olympus issue from Neil Gaiman’s run on Miracleman, but I guess for a pastiche series you have to forgive that, and it’s a very good idea to riff on. I wanted to see more of this though, ideas actually getting to play out, characters doing things, whereas after issue two I feel like there’s significantly less of that.

One very silly note is that I kind of balked at the main character’s hairstyle, which is the most “a bunch of dudes tried to come up with the coolest lady hairstyle” look imaginable.

[thanekos]

They definitely had more planned: " We’ll start with five issues but, if the response allows, I’d love to get to 30-35; I certainly have it tightly plotted out to 35. "

(Alas, we currently only have that first arc.)

[silverhammerman]

I'm surprised by that, as critical as I am of the series, it seemed to me like a pretty neat package, and I'd assumed that the creators involved had said what they were trying to say. I wonder what kinds of things they'd had in mind (or maybe still have in mind, since Vault Comics will sometimes wait a bit before deciding about sequels, seemingly) for subsequent stories. Fleshing out anything but the time between the final issue and this one seems like the only place they could go that wouldn't have to dance around being a typical superhero narrative.

[fra080389]

Old bearded man, all wise and powerful, set on conquering death... is he Albus Dumbledore?