In the end, this story did what I expect a great comic to do. It took me one way and then another, and left me emotionally invested in the characters, and ended with a Cliffhanger.

I do feel that the splitting of the stories between the Earth lives and the Space missions gets to be a tad tedious, but I understand the direction of the character's development and will wait patiently for the payoff. I enjoyed this issue, the Cover art is amazing, and the use of color, detail and the pencil work are a strong reason to pick up this book.

I found that this story was much less of a finale, but a transition to a different Atom Character. It featured very little of other characters and was pretty boring. The saving Grace was that I absolutely love Ivan Reis's artwork.

I am enjoying this series a real lot. I recently read the First series that has just been collected for the first time (Mage the Hero Discovered), and from what I have seen from Matt Wagner we are building to something big. I'm excited to pick up this comic every month. This is a good slow, but not arduously slow build with enough action, humor, and fun to keep a reader interested.I think that there are some slower parts so that accounts for my rating, but overall this is a great series, and I look forward to the story developing as we read on.