Review:  I have to confess, I had a hard time pinning this title down.  Everything in its build-up indicated to me that I was in for some wild, surrealistic ride.  Not that it's a stock-broker's meeting, but I made the mistake of forming an idea about these books before I even read them.

"Last Bus" is sort of equal parts "The Dark Tower" and "Mad Max" in some regards, except it's like these characters all found themselves in the thick of this plot combination in the middle of a bus trip.

There are a lot of great elements in place in these first two installments: The characters are diverse enough to offer a pretty interesting mix once they've each been properly show-cased and given room to breathe inside of the action.  There are apparently a number of levels of intrigue on top of the obvious "Where the hell are we?" angle.  Also, this plot seems to want to raise more questions than it answers.

The only issue ends up being the short format of these individual issues.  They don't feel so much like logical sub-divisions of the larger story so much as they feel like stopping points.  Each issue raises so many questions that you're almost unsure as to whether or not what you read actually included all you thought it to.  In short, it's kind of a shell game with some things so implied that you're not even sure they're really there.

In its defense though, this is derived from a web-comic, so the formatting is almost certain to be at least a little awkward once translated to print.  I like what I'm seeing, but I'd be reluctant to give it a higher rating until I see the "attack" tightened a little bit.  I don't need my teeth kicked in here, but a slight jostling might give this title the proper impact to win over a large number of people.

Overall: 3 stars.

Alex Haas