The Last Ranger Divides America For Very Unclear Reasons

Daryl D. Spivey’s The Last Ranger is a bold idea on paper. Bessa, a descendant of famed lawman Bass Reeves, serves as one of the last do-gooders in a splintered, near-future America after economic and social collapse. In the newly christened seven Sovereign States of Liberty, Bessa is a Ferryman – a person who can get you or your cargo wherever it needs to go. For this first issue’s story, she needs to smuggle a man out of New Dallas, with the rest of the issue dealing with flashbacks fleshing out both her father training her as a child and how she ended up under heavy gunfire from a band of roving rednecks.

The issue has solid visuals, boasting the talents of co-illustrators Raymund Bermudez and Unai Ortiz de Zarate, colorist Mike Stefan, lettering by Jaymes Reed and AndWorld Design, and a beautifully drawn cover by Gian Carol Bernal. I was occasionally disoriented by the contrasting line art styles between Bemudez and de Zarate, which felt a tad overt at times. Half of the issue features more hard, jagged inking like out of The Walking Dead, only for the other half to use far gentler line work emphasizing a more naturalistic lighting. It’s hard to tell if it’s an intentional artistic flourish or not, but both styles look great individually. The difference between how faces are drawn also varies a fair amount, sometimes looking more stylized, and other times highly realistic.

Yet there’s one crucial problem that trips up The Last Ranger: it never manages to saliently present a central conceit. Worse still, whenever it tries to explain how its world works, it just gets more confusing. A timeline included at the end of the issue is particularly glaring, coming across as poorly researched at best, and worryingly dismissive of the rest of the globe at worst. In a story that’s trying to be critical of America, it paints the nation as the anchor point of all society in a way typically reserved for Michael Bay movies. Outside of a mention of the UN, every major global structure, be it the Internet or World Economy, apparently just can’t weather the collapse of America.

I could just suspend my disbelief for a while if the strangeness of this world were introduced organically, but it’s not. Most of this timeline isn’t even introduced via the main story, but solely via the supplementary material at the end of the issue. This is unfortunately a recurring problem of the wrong elements being prioritized in the script.

To The Last Ranger’s credit, the artwork conveys the script very well. It’s the actual text and plot which meanders fruitlessly. Even though this is a story told predominantly from Bessa’s perspective, even the narration is inconsistent. Sometimes it’s from Bessa’s internal monologue, other times it’s narrated omnisciently with Bessa in third-person. There is no indication when the narrators switch other than the literal verb tense and pronouns used.

Then there are problems that are more bizarre. Bessa, who is supposed to be a hardened, practical woman, talks an awful lot about her appearance, including worrying about her cheek getting cut by a bullet and some shrapnel from a tree. She also has a weird exasperated response to not hearing from one of her regular contacts by saying “There I was, naked, bursting with anticipation, and just like a man, you left me… unsatisfied.” This is the only real attempt at sexual humor, and that’s probably for the best.

This misalignment of tone extends to the cover art, which places Bessa, a black woman, in a blue uniform that is a mixture of military and police riot gear in front of a flag with blue stripes. All the promotional art for The Last Ranger has her dressed like this, often with guns drawn. To be incredibly generous, it’s possible the double-meaning here is accidental, as the end page of the issue shows a normal, if tattered American flag with Bessa’s shadow in a similar framing. Perhaps later issues will show a transition as she evolves, but it’s an odd choice, and hammers home further that I’m not sure who this comic is for. Yet not a single creative decision previously mentioned beats the random inclusion of Spivey bringing up Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.

Okay, I never thought I’d have to do this in a review of a comic book but let me make something clear: the above image is not how Maslow’s Hierarchy works. The top is the lowest priority, not the highest. It’s a pyramid. A pyramid collapses without a strong foundation. You can’t build a structure roof-first. This is a fundamental misunderstanding of something I thought generally everyone understood, and it’s here for seemingly no reason? I am so confused.

Yet perhaps, in an odd way, it’s fitting that this is here, because it mirrors how confusing the final moments of the first issue’s story are. “It’s time to finish what you started.” Okay, but what did Bessa start, though? She finished the job. The guy got to his people. We’re also told repeatedly by Bessa and the guy that she needs to/can’t go back to New Dallas, which just comes back to talking about her face again. There is a six month time jump related to her face recovering. She’s a smuggler, not a runway model, why is this verging on feeling like an emotional subplot? Is there some symbolism here I’m not picking up on?

Despite several panels dedicated to Bessa’s backstory with her father, all we really know is he taught her how to survive around the time the country falls apart. As far as her motivations go, I’m not sure there are any. Her only expressed goal is to leave Texas, but is she leaving? And if she isn’t, then why set up seven sovereign sub-nations we won’t see? How does any of this lead to her becoming the titular Last Ranger? What is any of this building towards?

I realize I’ve already made the comparison once before but I think it’s fair to say that if there’s a great first issue to point to, it’s The Walking Dead’s first issue. We get to know Rick and most of his life in roughly two pages, then we’re right in the thick of it. We’re learning how this new world works. He joins forces with another survivor. He chooses to try and find his wife and son. He shows he still has compassion by putting down the one decaying zombie that’s just miserable. It’s a complete story on its own, it sets an open but clear course heading, and a solid tone. I’m not saying that exact flow of events needed to happen here, but the key story beats are crucial, especially in serialized formats like a comic series.

By contrast, there’s no clear character journey here. Bessa spends most of the issue either in flashbacks or fighting rednecks. Eventually she meets some people who want to help reunite America, but the how and why of their group is also never really established. Every time The Last Ranger could explain something that would make you care, it either jumps ahead or pulls up short. The guy she’s smuggling doesn’t even have an established name, and he’s the person she’s guarding, and seemingly going to be the person who drags her into wherever the story is heading next.

The closest we get to an indication of what Bessa’s story is going to be is the unnamed man saying: “No, Ms. Reeves, you’ll get back to helping people. That’s what you’ve always done best.” Sure, but… you shouldn’t have to tell us that at the last minute. Bessa doesn’t interact with anyone unless she absolutely has to. We see her talk to her contact at the market for a minute, eat at a diner by herself, ruminate on missing ice cream, take a job from the unnamed guy, get shot ever so slightly and have some splinters in her cheek, kick some ass, and then manage to get the guy to safety. Do you see what I mean? There’s a plot, sure, but it’s mechanical. It’s very “and then, and then, and then”; there are no “and because of that” moments outside of the final fight scene’s choreography.

That’s not heroism, it’s the day in the life of a smuggler. She’s not intentionally making any hard sacrifices by helping this man. She’s just doing her job. And the only other non-white person in this entire issue is a random thug with no lines and bad teeth? The included timeline suggests that racial tensions were higher than ever just a decade prior, only for the story to portray it as though there’s no racial tensions to speak of.

Nobody gives Bessa any problems in town. Everyone treats her with a fairly normal level of respect. The worst thing that Dwight, the leader of the band of rednecks hunting Bessa, ever does is slightly objectify her by calling her “Beautiful” like a nickname. This could actually be taken ironically, seeing as she’s covering her face with a rag by the time they get face to face. I’m not calling for slurs or anything toxic like that, but it’s the same problem as with Bessa’s “heroism”: We’re told that it’s a thing, but we do not see it. And if a story about a black woman becoming the local law in a regressed Texas isn’t going to actually grapple with these issues, then what is it going to tackle as its central subject matter? Where is the hook? What sets this apart from any other near-future stories depicting a societal collapse like this?

Making any kind of collaborative creative project like this is a ton of work. It’s a daunting task at the best of times, and I don’t envy anyone trying to balance such a politically charged setting. It’s clear that effort was made and that this is a passion project, but The Last Ranger desperately needs someone to come in and ask some hard questions to figure out what it’s actually about, who it’s for, and what it’s trying to say. There’s a clear lack of a visible central thesis at the jump, and while it may reveal itself in future issues, I’m not hooked into a desire to see it through, and that’s a shame.

I respect that Spivey is creating this comic in dedication to his father, an army veteran. I applaud Versus Productions for producing this comic despite potential backlash. A black woman reuniting a divided near-future America is still a great premise on paper. This is just the first comic issue, so the ship can be righted, but it will require a lot of work to make sense of this lore, let alone clearly define an arc Bessa is going to be sent on. The Last Ranger could be still great in the long run, but I hope it figures out what it’s about soon.

———

With over ten of writing years in the industry, Elijah’s your guy for all things strange, obscure, and spooky in gaming. When not writing articles here or elsewhere, he’s tinkering away at indie games and fiction of his own.