Annihilator #5 (Legendary)

via Previews World

writer: Grant Morrison

artist: Frazer Irving

The penultimate issue begins to explain everything and brings the story to its long-impending climax: the death of Ray Spass.

The Hollywood screenwriter attempting to revive his career with a brilliant new script who instead embarked on a quest with the dubious figure of Max Nomax to figure out how Max, the lead character of Ray's script, survived an epic conflict, has now reached his fateful moment.  He's near completion of the script, by the way.  And dying from a tumor in his brain.

He's discovered that Max isn't the hero after all, but a true villain, who gambled away the love of his life to settle the score with his rival, fueled by a madness that has been waiting for its own culmination from the start, when he declared that he would find a solution to death.  To bring back the woman he sacrificed?

Along the way, Ray's ex-lover, Luna, was also introduced, and this issue we even learn details of the big hit Ray has been trying to live up to.  Grant Morrison has been especially lucid, if typically heavy on the big ideas, and Annihilator as a result seems like a good way to introduce his work to movie audiences.  Have I mentioned Terry Gilliam as a possible director already?  Because the connection is too obvious, increasingly so.  If another director, then Christopher Nolan, who would have ample material to slow the pace down to a more contemplative interpretation.  

Frazer Irving's art is indelible to this project, a match step-for-step with the chaos Ray has been experiencing and the full grandeur of it.  Art direction has always been key to both Gilliam and Nolan's careers, aside from their storytelling.

There's so much to say before the story concludes, there seem to be several moments on which the issue could have ended, but there's always another step to be taken, and Morrison, always a step ahead of his readers, is keen to remember.  Every time Irving zooms in on a detail in the midst of a page otherwise concentrating on something else, it's a reminder of how in sync they are.

The ending will be most interesting...