Crosswind #6 Review

Writer: Gail Simone / Artist: Cat Staggs / Image Comics End of the Arc y’all! And what an ending! Crosswind has been top of the pile for me from the jump, I’ve never given out so many 9s, so it is no surprise that Simone and Staggs nail this ending with a perfect combination of emotion, sympathy, and brutality. I don’t say this often about a comic, but I believed every single panel of the one. This shit is real life, even if it does involve magical body swapping and contract killers. Getting to the good stuff, you’ll recall from Crosswind #5 that Cruz the hitman has been briefed by Vox, the cause of all this body switching. Cruz is on his way to Seattle to take out Cason (in Juniper’s body) and maybe Juniper too (in Cason’s body).

For the record, Cruz is here to kill ER’RYBODY. In a perfect Oh, My God/Oh, Thank God. echo, Cason and Juniper finally meet. Just in time for them to team up to beat back Cruz, but not before some loose ends get tied up and Jim gets his due.

In the middle of this is Vox, the vizier who masterminded this whole switcheroo. He is the only weakness in the plot, with ill-defined “powers” that never-the-less can’t change anything going on around him. His real situation is only revealed in a post-script. But in the middle of the issue, he drops his “poor old guy” facade. He is a vindictive ass who’s ready to watch Juniper’s whole family catch a bullet to assuage his own conscious. He gets his though, everyone does. Including the best beatdown of any comi…