OK, I was worried going into this issue that Yost would kill pretty much everyone but Aracely (and I knew that she was safe only because I knew that she's going to be in "New Warriors" with Kaine). In that way, it was like reading "Earth 2," where you feel like the writer has options that people dealing with more established characters, like Captain America or Spider-Man, don't have. It's hard to kill off Sharon Carter or Aunt May, at this point, and believe it will stick. Annabelle? Not so much. After all, Nightcrawler may get to return from the dead, but no one's going to bother healing Donald of his wounds.
The good news is that everyone lives. But, it's not necessarily good news to Kaine, since his relationships with Annabelle and Wally come to an end regardless. After the attack on Donald and the destruction of Kaine's room at the Four Seasons, Wally has clearly realized that the collateral damage that comes with Kaine isn't necessarily worth the protection that he believed that Kaine initially offered Houston. He promises to deal with the police, but it's his last favor; he tells Kaine to leave town. Moreover, Annabelle flees after seeing Kaine transform into some sort of spider-creature, like he did during the Other story in this series, to defeat Shathra, the entity that pretended to be Annabelle in the last issue. Both moments are devastating in their own way. Wally essentially rejects Kaine as a hero and Annabelle as a man, rejections that strike at the heart of his own sneaking suspicions about himself. It's why he's left as broken of an individual as we see here. The fact that he didn't leave behind Aracely is the only evidence that we have that he's not totally lost.
All in all, Yost does a great job here wrapping up the series. Similar to Simone taking 26 issues to tell one story in "Batgirl," Yost has essentially done the same thing here. This series told Kaine's time in Houston as he tried to see if he could be a hero and have a life. His story might not be done, but that one is. My only quibble with this issue is that I'm not really sure if using Zoe to blow up the hotel room was necessary. Shathra was probably enough of a threat to put everyone's lives in danger and cause property damage. Zoe just seemed too much trying to settle accounts, despite the fact that it was an account that I felt was already settled.
But, overall, I have to thank Yost for an amazing series. It was usually the comic that I anticipate the most each month and I was rarely (if ever) disappointed. I feel like Yost probably had another 25 issues in him (at least), but I'm glad that we got the ones that we did and I'm glad that we'll see Kaine in "New Warriors." Good stuff.
*** (three of five stars)
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