Review: Sheltered #15 (THE FINAL ISSUE)- Formulaic book, horrible ending

Writer: Ed Brisson
Artist: Johnnie Christmas
Publisher: Image Comics
Released: 11th March 2015


It was all random, and meaningless. The story was about the personalities involved, nothing else. The authorities were blameless. Any questioning of official narratives is being disrespectful of the dead. ‘Closure’ is all that matters. Let’s move on. Nothing to see here. End of story.

Does all of that sound familiar to you? It does to me. It’s the usual pattern that you see repeated in the mainstream media when anything involving the Police occurs. The message is clear. Trust in authority, don’t look, and don’t ask questions.

That’s the ending of Sheltered, well it should have been, but keep on reading to the final panel and you’ll get a twist that makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.  It comes across very badly, and I know that it’s going to upset a lot of readers.

So what happened? Why did writer Ed Brisson go with the final panel twist that negated everything else that he had previously written?

My guess is that he looked at the ending to his formulaic cult leader story, thought it was a bit dull, so went for the obvious twist in order to spice things up a bit. It didn’t work.

It failed because it was cheap, easy and unconvincing. It failed because it wasn’t properly thought out and was lacking in creativity. It failed because it was the kind of twist that you would expect to read in a child’s first story in a creative writing class.

So, what should he have done? Should he have gone with the dull ending? No, he should have written a better story that had more depth and more ideas, but he didn’t do that, so he was left with only two choices: 1- End it with the surviving characters looking sad. 2- End it with the predictable (yet unconvincing) twist.

He opted for the later, but it was his lack of creativity that forced him into this corner in the first place.

Ed Brisson can put a narrative together. He’s shown that in this book, but you have to ask yourself this question- Does the man have anything to say? My answer, after reading fifteen issues of Sheltered is NO. That sounds harsh, but that’s how I feel after investing all of my time and money in Sheltered.

I won’t be reading anything else from the pen of Ed Brisson. I gave him a chance, and he didn’t deliver. I’ll continue to look for new writers who have something to say, and I’ll continue to keep on writing for myself.

Sheltered turned out to be a very ordinary cult leader book with a desperately sad, tacked on ending. There was nothing new here, and after finishing it I'm left with the feeling that I put too much faith into something that never really delivered.

As I was reading the earlier issues of this book my mind was racing with the endless possibilities where the story could have gone. In the end it went nowhere. I assumed intelligence and creativity, and what I got in return was mainstream compliance, a lack of ideas, a painfully amateur ‘twist’ ending and a book that had absolutely nothing to say. I shouldn’t have wasted my time on this one. Oh well. You live, you learn, and you move on.

Rating for issue #15: 0/10
Rating for entire series: 2/10 (Interesting start, but gets very formulaic, and ends badly)