He has made it through everything. He’s made it through the horrors. He considers himself a survivor. He considers himself victorious because he isn’t dead. He’s about to realize just how wrong he is in Kong: The Great War #4. Writer Alex Cox concludes a story with artist Tomas Bianchi and colorist James Devlin. The integration of the art and the script had been so well-executed over the course of the series that it might have taken the entire series to completely reveal quite exactly what it was Cox and company were doing with the series. It may have seemed a bit lost in places, but the picture revealed at the end of the final issue is actually really impressive. 

The believed that they were the masters of the Earth. They believed that they were the greatest army on the planet. They believed that they could survive any danger at all. They had no idea. They had arrived on Skull Island assuming survival was going to be easy. Now there’s only one of them left. He’s lost in the heart of the jungle, but he’s going to find a sign of civilization. He’s going to find a temple. His fate is assured. 

Cox has been slowly making a statement about humanity in the course of the series. It’s simple. It’s primal. It’s dangerous. Humanity can work like hell to overcome the dangers of its environment, but there’s always something bigger out there. There’s always something capable of completely deleting any chances for survival. Any man-made hell can become a heartless, uncaring purgatory given a long enough timeline. Godzilla might be a symbol of humanity’s folly, but Kong is a symbol of the raw brutality of a world beyond humanity altogether. It’s pretty powerful stuff when the full image is revealed. 

Bianchi and Devlin are allowed to hit the page with the full force of the visuals at the end of the series. It’s been a lot of fun so far and it’s interesting to see it develop the way that it does. There’s a lot going on in and around the edges of the brutality, but there’s a stark simplicity to the visuals that feels beautifully brutal on a whole bunch of different levels. Above all, the immensity of the situation facing the sole survivor becomes that much more intense as the drama begins to reach its final few pages.

Cox and company have done a remarably good job of delivering everything to the page with a style that fully embraces the immensity that Kong is capable of delivering. It’s a bit strange to get the final perspective on it because ther remain so many questions at the end of the series. Kong has been a force of nature at the heart of the series, but the massive mystery of humanity in the heart of nature continues to lurk around the edges of every panel as the series draws to a close. Kong has been explored in the comics pages before. It’s nice to see a series focus so narrowly on the dark mystery of it all.

Grade: A