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)

Comic book review: Sheltered #13- Explosions in the Hollywood sky

Artist: Johnnie Christmas
Writer: Ed Brisson
Publisher: Image Comics
Released: 26th November 2014


Sheltered has been a clever comic book. Clever, not because it has been doing anything original, but clever because it has kept me reading it for thirteen issues now.

Why has it hooked me? Why has it tempted me to spend my time, energy and money on it? Probably because it hints at doing something more than it actually does. It gives you the impression that something is being kept until the end of the story, something that will make it all seem worthwhile.

Looking at it subjectively it’s been a very formulaic cult leader story so far. It’s about prepper (survivalist) kids, and religion plays no part in the narrative. It's usually religion that fuels real life cults such as this one, so the decision to eliminate that aspect of the story has limited the scope of the book. It doesn’t appear to have any ideological foundation. It’s Lord of the Flies, but not as good.

As the months have progressed the story has become more about personalities and hooking the reader with quick, startling moments of graphic and intense violence rather than trying to say something or to provoke any intellectual response from the reader. The more I read, the less it says to me.

Because it has been relying on action, violence and personality conflicts to keep things interesting, it’s become the comic-book version of a Hollywood blockbuster movie. It doesn’t appear to have anything to say, and when things start to get a bit dull it just blows something up instead.

In issue #13 something gets blown up, and nothing is really said. Cops are surrounding the compound now, and it’s Waco, but with kids, and no religion. The only thing that can save the book is a twist at the end. Will the volcano really blow? Will the end of the world really happen? Perhaps there is something else going on? At the moment it seems unlikely.

The narrative appears played out. Do I care if the government order followers massacre all of the kids, much like they did at Waco? I should care, but the good guys have already escaped, and all that’s left is a bunch of whooping cult followers and their charismatically cliched leader Lucas. I can’t feel any connection to them, not because I hate cult followers, but because they don’t really feel real to me. They are just cartoon/action-movie characters, not real people at all. If they end up getting slaughtered then I would feel as much empathy for them as I would for the villainous characters in a bad action movie. There’s no connection there, and I just don’t care. Just get this over and sacrifice them for a cool looking explosion. That’s where I am with this book right now.

I’ve been reading about these characters for thirteen long issues now, but I don’t care about any of them. I’m glad that it’s all over next month, because I’m running out of things to say about this book. If it has a spectacular twist at the end then that might justify the time and money that I’ve spent on it, but at the moment it’s looking like I made a bad decision to invest in this one.

Rating: 4/10

Comic book review: Sheltered #11- The brakes are on, and it’s starting to drag

Writer: Ed Brisson
Artist: Johnnie Christmas
Publisher: Image Comics
Released: 10th September 2014


The main reason for me reading Sheltered was the hope that the craziness going on in the prepper camp, the craziness that has led to children killing their parents in preparation for the end of the world, would be revealed as a psychological operation designed by a three letter agency to demonise people who want to be independent and get off the satanic corporate control grid.

There were early hints that this could be about mind control and media demonisation when a couple of panels showed a very famous mind-control trigger book, that book being ‘The Catcher In the Rye’ by J.D. Salinger. I’ve been waiting eleven issues now for this thread to be developed.  Guess what? It hasn’t been developed at all.

Instead I have been reading a Lord of the Flies retread with kids getting crazy, picking on outsiders, fighting amongst themselves and slowly going insane. The end of the world hasn’t happened, obviously, and a couple of deliverymen have been killed. The kids are arguing, as you would expect, and that’s about it really.

Issue #11 is a very slow, ponderous drag (and it really is starting to drag now) through the inevitable plot process where the outside world begins to discover what is happened on the camp. It really isn’t very interesting anymore.

The characters seem tired and played out. Some cops make fun of the prepper camp, calling them ‘crack-pots’ and ‘Whackos.’ I would expect that kind of mentality from cops. After all, if you wear a uniform of the control system your indoctrination and mind control programming is going to make you demonise anybody that wants to break away from the cult that you are so proud to be a part of, and yes government worship is cult worship. It’s called statism, and its the most murderous and violent form of cult worship in world history. Cops are cult worshippers, as are soldiers, as are beaurucrats, as are politicians. Apart from that point, I find little of interest happening in this issue. There are no twists, no surprises. It’s by the numbers story-telling. Competent, but hardly enthralling to read.

The cops are going to find out what the kids have been up to, and that will be it. There will be another bloodbath, probably, to inject some action-based excitement into the final scenes, and what have we learnt? That we shouldn’t be self-sufficient? That we should live with chains around our necks and be good corporate slaves to a system that hates our guts and calls us names like sheeple and useless eaters? It’s all very depressing, isn’t it? I’m going to be a stubborn idiot and read the next few issues, just to see if the mind control aspect comes into fruition. If it doesn’t, and I’m 90% sure that it won’t now, then I see little point in this story at all. Okay, so you’ve updated William Golding's tale of savage humanity and bullying little brats for the prepper generation. Great, but what exactly have you achieved here? What have you said that hasn’t already been said before?

Rating: 4/10