4 out of 5

Though repeating some of the pacing / decompression hiccups as in volume 3, the conclusion to the Rust series has a little more wiggle room in that regard – being the big ol’ finale – and brings back in all of the emotional weight and smart, concise character work from the tale’s start in its last several pages, which grants even more wiggle room. Rest assured: this is an ending, that allows for room to explore should Lepp ever want to, but is also decisive, and most importantly, gives our primaries realistic closure.

Volume 4’s “hiccups” are, zoomed out, that the first 100ish pages are the resulting actions from the setup in the back half of volume 3. If we hadn’t just been through a fairly similar cycle of discovery and robot battles between volumes 2 and 3, this would feel more major; but we did just go through that, and it’s harder to re-up the stakes beyond endangering the family again, and Jet pushing himself to the limit again. Thankfully, Lepp is – again – an amazing animator, and if we zoom back in to the story beats in a bottle, the book can be gripping. …Although, note I used the term “animator:” the feeling that this is drawn as a cartoon or movie is even more notable here, with a couple of panels feeling more like storyboard actions than necessary comic scripting. Because the intention is still to communicate motion, it ultimately works, but here are there are some pages that don’t break immersion, per se, but feel just a bit too slowed down to fully blow out the impact of a scene; Lepp, in other words, doesn’t always fully take advantage of the medium.

These blips are, it should be said, rare. And despite my criticism about the repetition, Lepp layers his characters into the action – their emotions; their history – and that helps to fill in the weight that is otherwise lessened by those elements I’ve mentioned. This weight is additive: once the book starts to allow it back in, there’s the real sense that this isn’t going to be a Disney story, and while I don’t want to intimate that it’s all doom and gloom, we do go pretty somber with things. Not cheaply; rather, sort of the realistic fallout people might go through in a disaster scenario, whether caused by giant automatons or something else. I really respected this: with some of the lore that was building, I was half-predicting an irksome cliffhanger; or, worse, there’s been a soft touch with some of the dialogue and characters here and there that had me worried we’d get a love-saves-the-day, sun-filled ending, and… no.

I believe this is the slimmest chapter of the main volumes, but it packs in quite a bit. Most satisfyingly, it just makes me want to read the series over again.

Rust is a true accomplishment. It’s imperfect, sure, but Lepp juggled some big ideas with world building and character work in an ultimately successful and satisfying fashion, making big ol’ 200 page chunks read as quickly as single issue floppies, while also being dense with content, and worthy of page-by-page appreciation of his animation.