Writer: Ed Brisson / Penciller: Lisandro Estherren / Colour Artist: Niko Guardia / Letterer: Ed Brisson / Collects The Last Contract #1 -#6 / Boom! Studios.
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14th April 2020 (Released: 6th January 2016)
The Pitch: a retired hitman known only as The Man has a list of his kills leaked by a mysterious blackmailer, making targets of anyone associated with his previous jobs. Forced back into the game he left behind, The Man fights to protect those the list exposed and uncover the identity of the blackmailer, unaware of the consequences the truth may hold.
Crime fiction, especially noir, is a breeding ground for existentialism. I don't know why. Maybe it's the brutal nature of crime. And of course, as brutal professions go, it's probably one of the more accessible. You're far more likely to become (and therefore understand) a criminal than you are a soldier. None of us wants to die for ephemeral ideals but we'll probably cheat and steal if we think we can get away with it. Or maybe it's the potential for us not just to be the perpetrators of crime, but its eventual victims too. We think we'll get caught and do time. Or maybe we won't and deep down, we'll have to live with the guilt of the thing we did. And that guilt will be the sentence. This is a notion that's plagued us forever. Dostoevsky did not write a novel called 'Crime and Enjoying yourself to the fullest afterwards'. There are signs that this existentialism exists in the characters of The Last Contract. Its lead, an ex-hitman known as 'The Man' is seeping regret and a need to repent. The Man cuts a lonely figure from the get-go. He's on the wrong side of eighty when we meet him. We know nothing of his past and the chances are that soon, neither will he. Alzheimer's is setting in. He has a dog that can no longer control its bladder but keeps him company. They deteriorate together. But it's not long before the past comes knocking for The Man in the form of two inept punks who have orders to kill him. This sets The Man out on an odyssey of violence, blackmail and recrimination that goes back years...
BRISSON DARES YOU TO HAVE EMPATHY - and sympathy - FOR HIS CHARACTERS AS PEOPLE
Brisson's writing in The Last Contract is sparse. He gives you exactly the information you need, as you need. It's a skill in writing, knowing what to show and what to infer. And Brisson's got it down. I don't know his super-hero work, although I'm sure I've got the first arc of his New Mutants run in the 'to-read' pile. I'll get to it, quit hassling me. He paints the characters as dark as he can, daring you to have any empathy for them as people or sympathy for them as corpses. He addresses the rewriting of personal history that we're all guilty of brilliantly in a scene where The man visits the brother of one of his victims only to learn that this guy was glad that his brother – a cop – got iced. It's one of the many unexpected turns this story takes as characters turn up to remind The Man of who he was and the things he was capable of, even though his addled mind wants to forget.
THE INVENTIVE PANELING CONVEYS THE FRACTURED MINDSET OF THE MAN BEAUTIFULLY
Lisandro Estherren's art takes Brisson's writing and gives it life. The people here are creased and folded, like dirty laundry. A lot of them seem like they've been rolled wet and put away hard. Estherren gives them the odour of failure and the stench of viciousness. Their faces look stuck in grimaces, mean spirits rising to the surface. Niko Guardia's colours add to the air of modern noir, making it bleed like bad people in crime fiction deserve. Between the art and the colours, you get a real sense of the blue mood of the book and the blandness of motel rooms. They put the emotional states of the characters into place. The inventive panelling conveys the fractured mindset of The Man beautifully, letting memories intrude on moments of violence. The Last Contract is a fatalistic, nasty story. One criminals might tell each other in bars. What you realise as you read it is 'the one last job' is a myth when your job is murder. The pull of justice for families and those who have to live in the slipstream of murder is too great for there to be one last anything. Unless, like The Man, you leave no one behind, either to avenge you or celebrate your demise.
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