The Last Barbarians focuses on the misfit siblings of Sylv and her brother Shadow. With things looking grim, they are desperate for work and are almost willing to take anything coming their way.
Written by: Brian Haberlin & Hannah Wall
Art by: Brian Haberlin
Colors by: Geirrod Van Dyke
Letters by: Francis Takenaga
We meet Sylv and Shadow as they finish a job that has gone south. As with their luck in life, the client isn’t happy with the results, and they didn’t get paid. Struggling for work as no guilds are willing to take a chance on them, they are forced to accept a questionable quest as a last resort.
Last Barbarians is a jumbled mess of a story. With the random lesson regarding giants, Sylv is not dedicated to any guild, and both are broke and homeless. The biggest problem is how slow the pacing becomes with all those small details.
Including all the details, we get more pages than needed on giants or why Sylv isn’t accepted in most trade guilds. These long explanations or setting up scenes to move the story make it hard to follow.
Overall, Last Barbarians biggest flaw is how badly the world and story are set up. We know next to nothing about the town, little information regarding Sylv and Shadow’s origin or history, and going at a slow, painful pace. The issue sometimes comes off as a storyboard movie pitch instead of a comic book.
There isn’t much that brings back readers, and the cliffhanger ending feels redundant and forced.