One Little Push is the final story in the Rippaverse comics Saints and Sinners anthology. It’s written by Will Jordan, who has experience in writing previously, but I believe this is his first time writing comics.

This story closes out the anthology in a very interesting style. The plot includes a few characters we’ve seen before in ISOM (and probably other series as well, but my main experience before this in the Rippaverse is through the ISOM series) and introduces a new one. Finishing the book with this story seemed very intentional. After reading through all these other adventures, we find a grim reaper type entity that has an unspecified amount of control over the fate of characters. Has it been hiding in the shadows, just out of panel in the rest of the comics of this book? Has it had a hand in the deaths and near death escapes that have occurred? It supplies an interesting perspective to look back on and think on the stories with this new knowledge.

The art in this issue goes back to a very classic comic/animation style. It kind of reminded me of the X-Men Evolution series from a few years ago. Well, now that I check on that, I guess I mean from a quarter century ago…huh…Anyway, this is a style that I personally enjoy. It brings me back to an era of shows from my younger years that I very much enjoyed. There are deep, striking colors that add a boldness to the characters and scenes. Something I noticed was the switching from blue to red heavy panels multiple times. I’m still trying to find if this could have a larger significance or if it just makes the colors stand out more starkly. The artists that did this comic (Carlos Reno and Marco Lesko) do a fantastic job of making the character models look good from all angles. I’m no expert in comic books, but from what I’ve seen, this isn’t always an easy thing to do.

The story of this book switches focus quickly from the mysterious grim reaper type character to an elite assassin that is hired to kill a high value target. The target for this attempt is actually my main criticism of this story. I understand that Rippaverse is probably not going to invite people to kill off major characters in their first story in-universe (especially ones that just recently had a new collection of their self-titled comics listed as “vol. 1”). Having this outside the comic universe knowledge, I knew that this character was safe. It’s really not the point of the story, the focus is much more on how a small change to something can affect massive parts of a world. I just think changing the target to another character who could actually be in danger of dying may have added more intrigue to the plot. The “death embodied” archetype of character in comic universes is always intriguing, however. The addition of this character to this universe opens so many possibilities and it’s not clear exactly what their goals are. I hope this entity shows up again in the future because I believe the addition of this type of third-party can create compilations for both heroes and villains and enrich any plot.

The dialogue itself is gritty and the action is very quick and violent. The assassin is very much a John Wick type who can swiftly clear out a room. I thought his intro and the initial display of his abilities worked great. It really set up just how powerful this grim-reaper character is that he could “override” the assassin’s powers and change the course of history. The intro dialogue for the grim-reaper was the highlight to me. I basically could hear this voice. A gravelly, distorted, not-quite-human sounding voice that was indifferent to the status or suffering of people, but had just a hint of emotion almost completely concealed by a cold exterior. This was masterful writing and using it as the intro hooks the reader immediately. I enjoyed the climax, where we were shown the multiple different paths that this scenario could take. The tension while reading was high (even knowing the likely outcome), while the dialogue made the grim-reaper feel cold and apathetic to the pain that each path might cause. Its only drive seemed to be the desire to see the most interesting path forward. It’ll be fascinating to see how far the entity takes this desire and the degree of change it’s willing to enact to push forward on its desired paths.

One Little Push is a Fantastic finish to this anthology. It really made me want to go back and read all the stories again and speculate on whether the events were influenced by this third party or if things were always going to happen that way. This is the best kind of feeling to have when finishing a book because you get to think back and try to theorize and connect dots, whether real or just imaginary. I think Will Jordan did a great job introducing this new strangeness to the comic universe. I hope he puts out new novels, comics, or any type of writing, really. He has a massive talent for it and I would enjoy going through more stories like this.

-Patrick Jones