It’s official. The entire series is a setup. The final chapter, The Strain: The Fall #4, is just more of the same. I was hoping with all this setting up that the final chapter would be this explosive ending. But it’s all of the same problems, and it doesn’t really end. I get that the story continuing in another series sells more, but I personally would not continue this because the entirety was boring confusing and therefore unpleasant.
I’m going to try and keep this short because I’ve covered a lot of this in prior reviews and try and keep it fresh for the people who actually follow these reviews. This comic brings in all the characters that have been previously introduced, but there seem to be some convoluted connection scheme between them that isn’t entirely clear. It’s too scattered and thinly spread to fully understand for me. This might just be because I’m still a comic novice, but it was impossible for me to keep up who’s whom and why they know them. It overall just appears to lack focus and a key element to every story: A PROTAGONIST. If someone asked me who the story was about, I would probably say something along the lines of about 5 random groups of people who kill these creepy tongue things in New York City for some reason I’m not fully sure of.
What else do you want in an action comic? Violence! There was finally some proper fighting but it seemed fairly aimless. Usually when people fight it’s for a purpose, but this was just fighting. I mean there was some clear intents from a few select characters, but for others there seemed to be little reason; it wasn’t even for shits and giggles or some kill number goal. It wasn’t a big focus even, almost like the author just had to fill his quota for number of panels with blood.
Beyond that there wasn’t much more substance. All that was left was list of cliffhangers for the next series: Angels. I mean, that’s basically it. I wished there was more to ending of this because I was holding out hope that the ends would justify the means, but the finale was just as much a dud as its predecessors. Guillermo Del Torro failed to deliver for me and I wish I could hold The Strain: The Fall in higher regard.
You could probably guess this but I would not recommend this comic (or series) and a cover price of $3.99 is far from worth it. If you want to read Angels, you might have better luck just reading a synopsis; It may even be less confusing because I honestly understand very little of what is going on in this comic.
Brendan is Bigmacd101, a writer for the Red Shirt Crew and tired of being thoroughly confused. He has not yet decided if he will be following the next series in the strain series. Hunt him down on Twitter at @bigmacd101 if you wanna hear more of the things he says.
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