Loose Ends #3 Review

Writer: Jason Latour / Artist: Chris Brunner / Image Comics Loose Ends stays violent in what is the fastest issue of the short series. As noted after issue #2, this one was set up to cover a lot of ground – or at least it needed to if it were to catch up to the pace required to tell a full story in 4 issues – and to that end, while you may not be convinced in the potential of its conclusion, we are all intrigued enough to see what it is. Where issue #3 shines are some of the imagery involved, where Chris Brunner and Rico Renzi paint beautiful scenes that say more than words; where words would do little more than distract from the tone the panels themselves carry.

Like previous issues, much of this one is told through flashback of Sonny in the military, his service in the Middle East paving the way for the life he’s in now. Frenetic and somewhat hard to follow, the flashbacks have little time to establish the characters needed to substantiate our characters’ backstories and how deeply they dive into illicit trade. It’s hard to see their worth; one might wonder how the present-day story might be different if readers were not given them at all and left to speculate parts of his past, filtering details that risk convolution or confusion, deciding for themselves what clues from the past are most consequential. Loose Ends is most gripping in its present-day drugs and danger, the Bonnie and Clyde runaways in their suffering, fear, anger, and the temporary solace they find in drugs …