Last Flight Out #1: Call Of Duty Meets 2012 [Comic Book Review]

I would best describe Last Flight Out #1 as a typical Call of Duty story. But if it basically took place in that 2012 film.

Mark Guggenheim (Arrow, X-Men) is the writer for Last Flight Out #1. Eduardo Ferigato (Self/Made) is the artist, with Marcelo Costa as the colorist and Diego Sanches as the letterer. Eduardo Ferigato is also the cover artist; the sole cover artist, in fact. There seems to be no variant covers. Oh, and finally, Dark Horse Comics is the publisher for this comic book series.

Last Flight Out #1 will go on sale on September 8, 2021. You can purchase print copies at your local comic book store. Or if you’re fine with the digital version, you can download it directly from Dark Horse Comics here.

Warning: spoilers for Last Flight Out #1 below. If you have any interest in this weird mix of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare and 2012, stop here, and come back once the shooting, screaming, and crashing is over and done with. One way or another.

Last Flight Out #1: Plot Summary

Last Flight Out #1 starts us off with a case of neglectful parenting. Specifically, on the part of a Dr. Ben Caewood. The story introduces us to him by having him miss his own daughter’s birth because of work. It gets worse. 2 years later, his wife and daughter get into a car accident, and while in one of the self-driving cars he designed, ironically. His daughter survives, but his wife doesn’t. Worse, it seems as though he knew there was a problem with the cars’ AI, but didn’t or couldn’t fix it, but still sold it anyways. It seems the guilt was so great that he basically stopped interacting with his daughter, instead leaving the raising to nannies.

This situation apparently continued for the next 22 years, until we finally reach the present day of Last Flight Out, where Dr. Caewood is now a shipwright working on spaceships. Specifically, he’d been working on a trio of interstellar arks designed to carry Earth’s population to another star system to escape a dying planet. This current ark is the third and final one. As it turns out, Dr. Caewood’s daughter is not getting on it. Gee, I wonder why? Maybe 24 whole years of alienation was the trick?

Anyways, Dr. Caewood decides that he won’t accept this outcome, and that he now wants to change. He even goes to the UN Secretary-General to convince her to get him to Chicago to get his daughter on the ship. The ship that’s about leave in 24 hours. Not only that, but Chicago is now basically a “third-world hellhole” now. Fortunately, Ms. SecGen has access to some special forces soldiers, fresh from acquiring lithium and other important stuff from some uncooperative nations. She agrees to loan them to Dr. Caewood to extract his daughter. The catch? He wants to come with.

Unfortunately, things go horribly wrong. The VTOL plane he and the special forces are riding in gets into some kind of…thingy. Red light bathes the plane, and suddenly things are falling off. Long story short, the VTOL crashes, killing all but Dr. Caewood and 3 of the special forces. They now have only 20 hours to get to Chicago, get Dr. Caewood’s daughter, and then hightail it to San Francisco to get back to the ship before it launches. Oh, and they’re not postponing the launch for anyone, not even the ship’s shipwright. Will they make it in time? Well, that’s what we’ll find out in Last Flight Out #2.

Last Flight Out #1: The Good

As I mentioned before, Last Flight Out #1 has a story that is basically your typical Call of Duty: Modern Warfare mission. Even the whole “Mission goes horribly wrong due to transport crashing” is like every helicopter crash in Call of Duty history. The only difference is the whole escaping a dying Earth in an ark thing. It reminds me of that 2012 film, or maybe even the backstory of WALL-E. That’s not your standard Call of Duty fare.

The artwork is also pretty gorgeous. Eduardo Ferigato did a pretty good job on the backgrounds, character designs, models, etc.. It’s pretty impressive stuff that reminds me of Call of Duty backdrops.

Last Flight Out #1: The Bad

My major pet peeve about Last Flight Out #1 are the characters themselves. So far, all of the major characters are fairly unlikeable. It’s hard to sympathize with a father who’d abandoned his daughter for 24 years before deciding that now he wants to reconnect with her, or a special forces officer who executes one of his men for having a broken leg. Admittedly, the story does give somewhat reasonable explanations for their actions and behavior. However, it still doesn’t really make them sympathetic.

Especially for the special forces officer, Captain Burke. He really could’ve treated his injured soldier’s leg, made a splint out of local materials, and then made a stretcher also out of local materials to efficiently carry him. With 4 people in total, he had more than enough people to carry a stretcher, and still keep a good watch. I just feel like he didn’t try hard enough to save his soldier, and that he basically executed his wounded because he was an inconvenience. I feel like it’s better to just exhaust all possible options before going with the most extreme one. Just my opinion here.

As a minor issue, I feel like the VTOL plane’s design didn’t look like it was capable of doing Mach 4.04. To give you an idea of what it looks like: imagine someone converted a UH-60 Black Hawk into a VTOL by removing the rotors, and replaced the main rotors with tiltjets. It doesn’t look like something that could fly faster than a SR-71 Blackbird. Just saying.

Also, Dark Horse Comics offers no preview pages for Last Flight Out #1. Hence, why you get nothing but the cover art.

Conclusion

Last Flight Out #1 gives us a story that feels like a Call of Duty: Modern Warfare mission if it took place in 2012 (the disaster movie) or in the backstory of WALL-E. Unsympathetic main characters hold back the story a bit, but it’s a decent read if you’re a Call of Duty fan. Maybe when the next issue of this sci-fi comic book series comes out from Dark Horse Comics, the main characters will get more likable? Then again, maybe not. After all, they could always die.

Source: Dark Horse Comics