This year, I decided to do something different for Fred Van Lente Day, I'm going to review one issue of Ivar, Timewalker a day, leading up to Fred Van Lente Day!

We conclude with Ivar, Timewalker #12, by Fred Van Lente, Pere Perez and Andrew Dalhouse...

This issue doesn't even come out until December 16th, but Valiant hooked me up with advance review copy. No advanced preview images, though, so this bad boy will be all text.

Anyhow, the series draws to a strong conclusion as Van Lente masterfully pays off the various threads that he has set off throughout the series. In fact, there's a bit from I think issue #1 (maybe issue #2) that was seemingly not a big deal that pays off big time in this final issue.

The main plot is that Ivar and Ark (the dinosaur slave warrior) must team-up to take down the Promitheans, who have seemingly taken Neela from certain death and turned her into the evil Mistress. Stress "seemingly." So Ivar and Ark must fight through an army of Cloned evil Mistresses to stop the Null from destroying all existence.

This leads to an epic fight scene by Perez and Dalhouse where they show Ivar and the Mistresses fighting through time arcs, so they're literally fighting THROUGH history - it's a beautiful piece of sequential work. Perez has really done some remarkable sequential stuff during this series and I presume his ability to keep pulling if off frees Van Lente to THINK of crazy sequential ideas for them to use. It is a great combination.

Anyhow, this issue is promoted as a changing of the guard and that happens, but I won't spoil how or why, but it really seals the whole series up nicely.

Congratulations to Fred Van Lente and all the artists he worked with on this series for putting together a heck of a series!