Comic Review: Steven Universe #28

This four-part space adventure draws to a close.

Overview:

With Lars and the Off Colors frozen in time and facing their darkest fears, Stevonnie works to direct the ship out of the nebula that is causing the problems.  Captain Lars meets with the love of his life, Sadie, who helps him to regain his confidence.  Reinvigorated he races to save the rest of his crew before Stevonnie gets them out of the mysterious gases.  As they finally reach safety, they are met by Emerald, but the Off Colors new found strength may be enough to save the day and get them back home.

Our Take:

Epic space adventures are one thing but mix in Lars and his ragtag crew of Off Colors, and this was a run worth reading.  Starting back in issue #25, Steven Universe comics took us on a whole different kind of ride bringing back the lovable space pirates.  It is exactly these kinds of stories that the Steven Universe comic book is perfect for.  Being able to expand on side-plots and characters that are off doing their own things is precisely the lore that readers are hoping for.  To deliver such a story over four issues makes it that much more exciting.

Beyond all of the excitement, there is a more profound underline message to the story.  We are talking Steven Universe here, so how could it not?  As Lars and the Off Colors are faced with hallucinations of their biggest fears, they learn to overcome everything that is holding them back.  Even the nefarious Emerald holds less weight over them now that they have faced the things that scare them most.

Lars has the most significant growth from this story.  Climaxing in this issue with his meeting with Sadie, Lars learns to accept his role as a leader and help his friends.  Sadie brings things back to when Lars was just happy to be baking and reminds him of the joy of doing something without having to impress anybody.  This gives the captain the push he needs to assure that he does everything in his power to make it home.

The unfortunate thing is despite all of Lars and crews growth and development, it is genuinely Stevonnie that comes in to save the day.  Not to downplay their importance, but it is underwhelming for them to solve all the problems on their own.  At the beginning of this saga, the Off Colors were facing a world of trouble, and all it takes is for Steven and Connie to arrive and punch a few things into a computer to save the day.  Understandably, Lars and crew had their demons to face, but there were some complications that they should have figured out on their own in the end, like the issues with the fuel being blended with the gas.  In fact, it could have been an even stronger story if Stevonnie never even arrived, and they needed to solve the problems for themselves.

This conclusion was a lot of fun and included many cameos from some forgotten characters.  Lars and the Off Colors are interesting enough that they could handle their own spin-off miniseries.  So, this made for one of the more exciting runs to come out of the Steven Universe comic title thus far.  There are still many burning questions to come out of this, like will they make it home, or will Emerald catch up to them?  Hopefully, these open doors will allow for some appearances from these characters sooner rather than later.

Score

7/10

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