This volume is about an event in the print district. First there’s an invisible shooter randomly shooting people, so nobody is in the print district, including the press. Then there’s no police on the streets due to “blue flu”, which is code for somebody high up wanted them to stay home. On top of all that the biggest storm in many years hit the City. All this is slowly uncovered by Spider and his assistants, but they still don’t know what the purpose of it all was.
I like the way all events seemed disconnected at first, but slowly it’s clear that there’s a plan behind it. I even thought that the storm was somehow controlled by the Smiler, since this IS the future. I knew Det. Newton would come back, but I didn’t know it would be so appropriate in this situation, her being the only honest cop, she fits perfectly in this story.
During the storm Spider is injured and Yelena writes the column for him. When he wakes up in Yelena’s home we finally learn he has Information Pollen, and he only has about 1 year to live. I knew he was dying, so now we get confirmation. I don’t know if this was done to make Spider more sympathetic, I personally always liked him anyway, and this doesn’t really change much for me.
Another nice character moment is Yelena’s new spider tatoo, which means she is obviously in love with Spider.
The conversation between Yelena’s father and Spider felt like Spider talking to his older self, not only visually but also in the words. It also makes sense that Yelena likes Spider so much.
But Spider is also looking more and more like Warren Ellis, with all black suit and a cane. Or maybe it’s Ellis that started to look like him after the end of the series?
I loved the dialog between Spider and the Prez. He managed to put doubt in the public’s mind without really giving away any true evidence. He also made the Smiler look bad, since Smiler is so arrogant.
But the volume ends with two double shockers: the real purpose of the disaster in the print district was to destroy all the evidence logged in the print district system, so Spider has to start from scratch to collect evidence. However the Smiler also killed all the people Spider got his info from, so he’s been covering his ass from a long time already.
The last cliffhanger is the death of Smiler’s wife and kid. Spider almost can’t believe the Smiler would do that, but he’s now even more motivated to take him down.
There are only 2 more volumes left, so I can’t wait to see how this ends.