Standstill #8 // Review
Ryker and Colin are on the run from a highly-trained assassin who wears a wetsuit and weilds a couple of menacing-looking daggers. So they’re on the run from a dangerously skilled killer. This would normally mean certain death, but Ryker has something that could make things almost certain to go in their favor: Ryker has a gadget that can allow him to stop time. Only thing is: he’s not using it. Why would that be? The answer to that and so many other questions is revealed in Standstill #8. Writer Lee Loughridge and artist Alex Riegel conclude their series with an energetic bit of action and intrigue.
Ryker is up against someone who knows full well what kind of tech he has. And so he knws how to circumvent it. This is going to make things particularly dangerous for Ryker and Colin as the killer slowly advances. The ability to stop time gets a bit complicated in a final showdown that’s going to test all of Ryker and Colin’s instincts and survival skills. The two heroes are trying to avert the potential catastrophe of any government getting its hands on the tech, but t’s not going to be easy.
Loughridge finds a suitable end point for a series which could really go on at great length and get into a lot of really interesting avenues of phiosophy and metaphysics if he really wanted to. As of the end of this series, however, there IS a clear progression of action which features long stretches of clean momentum shooting across the horizontally-oriented page. The rhythm of the action feels logicallly and thoughtfully placed on the page with an eye towards maintaining the simplicity of the premise. There’s a bit more complexity drawn-into the situaton as the series reaches its climax, but the art keeps it all moving quite well.
Riegel uses the landscape formatting of the series to excellent effect as everything rushes forward on the page in a huge chase sequence. The action remains impressive as Ryker is forced to deal with everything without using the one thing that could make him more or less invincible. Loughridge has written a hell of a lot of tension in thescript that Riegel is able to embrace in a series of scenes that have well-articulated tension. The inevitable conclusion might not quite hit the page with the kind of impact it could have had, but it remains a great deal of fun from beginning to end.
The tech ivolved in the series could easily move on to a second series. Loughidge makes no doubt at issue’s end that he would be interested in moving forward with a second series of Standstill...and there are certainly a lot of different directions that the concept could move in with respet to a second series, but there’s enough basic satisfaction in the end that everything feels more or less resolved in 8 parts. No need to move forward with a equel unless Loughdirgs and copay truly have something new for another serial.
