Lost Vegas #4

"Fourth Hand  |  Know When to Run"
written by Jim McCann
art by Janet Lee

If gambling could be a philosophy for life—which I suppose it can be and has been in the right hands—its most vehement and articulate advocate would be Roland.  Lost Vegas—despite its escape plans, heist ambitions, and grassroots freedom fighting—is really the story of how Roland learns to, in his words, play with the table, to conspire with your fellow gamblers against the house and to trust that they won't screw everyone else over for their own hand.  The table:  Roland; Loria; his telepathic, amorphous roommate Ink; dreadlocked technician, Rinny; abdicated princess, Lady Kaylex; her large, stoic deer (with science) Atho; and now, somewhat ambiguously, the very same Godspark that destroyed Roland and Loria's home planet years before.

McCann's conclusion to the short series is satisfying precisely because it is incompletely resolved, even if its execution is a little stiff and heavy-handed.  If this were a more essentially political story, an unequivocal victory for the insurgents would perhaps have included the overthrow (or perhaps the death) of authoritarian despot Ensign Scotsorn and the Akians, who are responsible for the war and the subsequent oppressive "peace," the reinstatement of Lady Kaylex as the ruler of her people, the restoration of Loria, and the universal freedom of all the prisoner-servants aboard the Lost Vegas.  That its core characters escape alone in a stolen spaceship to explore personal freedom—and perhaps to return Loria to her adopted home from which she was unjustly exiled—and that we have little knowledge what becomes of the rest of the disabled and all-but-destroyed ship and its passengers, both gamblers and staff, make its ending only rewarding within the personal scope of the series.

The same may be said for the actual plan itself.  Lost Vegas may aspire to heist cleverness and action thriller, but the series of events leading to the Godspark explosion in the combat arena are underwhelming, relying on little more than the extremely convenient special skills of its conspirators.  (A less jaded way of articulating the same point would be that Roland creatively used precisely the skills to hand.  I am jaded.)  His denouement on board the getaway ship is, on the other hand, delightful.  It playfully teases the competitiveness of the ladies, both queens in their own right and both vying in some manner for Roland's attention, whether romantic or not.

But if McCann's action sequences are less than thrilling, Lee's artwork remains beautiful.  In particular, Ink's loopy, organic arms provide interesting and intricate page designs.  Atho, whose substantial mass often pushes out of the insufficient frames, as well remains one of the most physically compelling figures on the page.  And Lee's two-page spread at the center of the issue withdraws from the ship itself to allow an epic perspective on the ship's explosion from space, suggesting both the enormity of the ship and the even greater vastness of space in which it is now stranded. 

I had fleeting hopes leading up to the release of the final issue in this mini-series that, like Lost Vegas #1, Lost Vegas #4 would feature a glorious wrap-around cover by series artist Janet Lee.  And certainly, the cover delivers, even if it's not the panoramic spectacle of the first issue.  It's a portrait of space destruction, the floating detritus of a wasted spaceship, which is itself a mirror of the extravagant Earth city.  Only after finishing the story do we discover that it is a first-person perspective, from the eyes of protagonist Roland astride the magnificent science deer Atho, whose horns—one broken—peek out from the bottom right of the composition.