Abel has been a slave. He’s worked under the yoke of oppression knowing full well that he has had the power to lash out at his captors with a cataclysmic supernatural force. That changes in an overwhelming burst of energy brought to page and panel in Middlewest #17. Writer Skottie Young has all of the elements for a major showdown in place at the beginning of the issue. He sets things in motion and allows artist Jorge Corona to go to work, letting all of the pent-up aggression of the series shoot violently across the page with sumptuous color by Jean-Francois Beaulieu.

Carnie witch Maggie has brought a small army of carnival workers to Raider’s slave farm. She’s put up with his operation for far too long. Raider and his slavers refuse to yield to the mob, mobilizing towering defense tech against Maggie and her army. Somewhere in the middle of it all is Abel. He has the opportunity to truly let loose on Raider, but Maggie and her army could get hurt. With all the anger of a literal tornado raging inside him, Able may not be able to keep his own power in check before it is unleashed on Raider and everyone else in the vicinity. 

After sixteen issues of the series, Young knows full well what his artist is capable of doing on the page. There have been moments in the series where he has trusted Corona and Beaulieu to deliver a hell of a lot of story. All too often, a writer will try to over-render moments with dialogue and narration and such. In the climax of the conflict between Abel and Raider, Young lets the drama of the moment flow across the page without encumbering the page with too much scripting. 

Given as much room as they are, Corona and Beaulieu deliver strikingly overwhelming combustion of conflict to the page. The grey downpour at the opening of the issue accompanies a very tense moment between Maggie and Raider. It serves as prelude for the deep, luminescent pinks of the fire that consumes the battlefield. Corona’s rendering of the massive Raider and his physical aggression against Abel in the middle of the issue is given powerful contrast to the issue’s climax as Abel loses control. Corona modulates the massiveness of the emotional aggression to shift beautifully from threats to action to response in stages that escalate beautifully. 

Young, Corona, and Beaulieu have been marching Abel and company through a slow, steady arc that reaches a huge climax in Middlewest’s 17th issue. The intensity here is elegantly rendered with magic and power firmly rooted in the sense of emotional and interpersonal drama that builds on events circulating around the series for the past sixteen issues. Different elements of aggression have been drawn together with such a remarkable sense of economy that it’s actually strange to think that this is still only the seventeenth issue of the series. A story doesn’t typically achieve this level of climax until years of steady build-up have passed. 

Grade: A