Gideon Falls, Vol. 6: The End
Jeff Lemire, writer; Andrea Sorrentino, artist; Dave Stewart, colors
Image Comics, 2021
Gideon Falls has been a tale of interdimensional craziness, so it feels appropriate for the series finale to be presented as a single graphic novel-length issue. It certainly helps keep the action straight as all of the "Gideon Falls" universes finally converge. One character describes the convergence as "collapsing into the center," which gives rise to many surreal visual sequences involving rising and falling, or different realities depicted as mirror images of each other. Since these images are not possible in the real world, they sometimes look rather abstract--but Sorrentino finds a variety of techniques to illustrate the changes (I'm reminded of the challenges Grant Morrison presented to his artists on Doom Patrol and The Invisibles).
If there is any difficulty following the narrative, it is mostly due to the regular shifting between realities (along with the group of characters associated with each), which has been part of the series all along. Here it is more accelerated, as if several of the previous collections had been compacted into one. After some trippy visuals like an Escher-like impossible staircase, the story ends with Clara and Danny in a park. They are talking about the family, Father Fred, and Danny's therapist Doctor Xu. The final panels show Danny finding a fragment of the Black Barn, followed by the Smiling Man. It looks circular, like the start of a new cycle: as much a new beginning as an end. I suppose some kind of definitive conclusion would have been nice, but inconsistent with the rest of the story.
The collection includes the entire Final Script, plus "The Inner Workings of Gideon Falls." This features an actual Multiverse Map, along with several diagrams showing how the Barn interacts with the universe's timelines. It would have been useful to have these earlier!
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