4 out of 5

In a way, this “conclusion” – preview of my sentence, putting that in quotes – is obligatory. Copra built up and flowed through its major storylines recently, leaving us in need of a wrap-up, but that wrap-up is in issue #50. In staying true to his Image Comics / Suicide Squad inspirations, Copra writer / artist / everything-ist Michel Fiffe has to burn it all down on his way out, with a kind of non-sensical brawl to cap things off, a Copra-sized Avengers vs. JLA showdown that brings his different hero / antihero factions to one location, and to scuffle over kinda sort misunderstandings, or kinda sorta no reasons at all.

Meanwhile, hilariously, Sonia and Flo are nearby, watching it all unfold on a monitor, sort of like… us, the audience, to whom Copra goes ahead and speaks directly in his opening summary pages to each issue, quite indicative of the self-aware vibe of these issues. …Building up to said brawl in issue #49, which is streamlined to such a degree that Fiffe crops out the word bubbles to the edges of the pages, supremely effective baller move that doesn’t try for an “arty” silent issue, but is rather just like, bro, words don’t matter here.

Prior to that, our preceding issues hop around from character to character, giving each their reasons for ascending on Copra HQ’s “section Z,” which contains some secret bad news; curiously, we also get at least one major plot development that feels like it’ll take more than issue #50 to resolve, so we’ll see how that goes – will Fiffe leave things open for another volume, or spin-off?

So these issues are a blast, a nice victory lap check-in with practically everybody, but done in a somewhat “linear” fashion so that the issues feel complete (like we’re not just jumping around in the timeline until issue #49)… and then that conclusion is also a blast, but it feels like too little, or too abrupt at the same time. I get that we just had world-ending stuff happen, and we’ve a (presumably) oversized final issue around the corner, but book 49 goes by so quickly (even when luxuriating in Fiffe’s stunning art – stunning everything) that it can’t help but be a tad underwhelming.

That’s all. Otherwise, man, what an accomplishment, to be able to deliver something so satisfying and fun this far on, and a great comparison point to various scuffles throughout the series – like, the color, the layouts, all of it, are just so goddamn good at this point, it’s impossible to imagine where Fiffe goes from here. And even if it’s – very unlikely – nowhere, I’ve reread Copra multiple times, and keep finding it more and more satisfying upon rereads the more issues we’ve had to review.