So, okay, yes, I waited weeks and weeks to review this, but not out of laziness. I waited because I wanted folks to have a chance to have read it before I talked about it. If you haven't read it by now, well, honey, I don't know what to tell you. If you're holding out for the trade, I totally dig that, but for the love of Pete, do not keep reading. Just skip.

Now, that done, let's get right to it and say it: I am suffering some serious cognitive dissonance here because I am both totally satisfied with this ending overall and left totally unsatisfied about specific things that happened in it. One of those things? The first time through I completely missed the initial resolution itself. When Joe falls on the basement floor, disappears from the frame and then holds aloft the bottle of soda - like an Excalibur sculpted in life-saving sugar - I absolutely did not in any way recognize it or realize the significance and a page later found myself thinking, Jeez... did I miss something? I flipped back and the second time through I caught it. In some ways that really pissed me off. I mean, I've only spent, what, 14 months waiting for this kid to find a soda and when he does it's very nearly the smallest frame on the page? On the other hand, the truth is that the real world resolution of the epic battle being waged inside Joe's mind is, by the nature of the story itself, small and undramatic. In the world of Joe's fantasy millions of lives - the literal embodiments of all of Joe's cares and fears and fantasies and even his dearest childhood pet - hang in the balance of his fight with Death and his defeat of that malevolent usurper of joy is a moment of brilliant light and pitched battle.

In the "real" world, Joe drinks a soda. Period.

Of course, that isn't the end, because there is still this whole world of mind to be saved and Joe's compatriots are still fighting in it, awaiting his return. The shuttling back and forth between the world of Joe's hallucination and the world of Joe's house are done especially effectively in this issue, more effectively than they had been in several issues. That sense of flickering between realities, that life sort of stops in one and resumes in the other when Joe transitions between them, hasn't been this strong since the very beginning. I think in part that was in service to the story element of Joe's declining state, as his ability to distinguish weakened in parallel to his own physiological decline, but I think in part that's also because as the series goes on the distinction becomes less novel for the readers. This issue promises to pay out, though, one way or the other, by virtue of that "8 of 8" on the cover and that makes us reengage all over again. I felt like that aspect of the story, that Joe straddles worlds and has something literally vital to do in both of them, was really strongly present in this issue and I loved it and loved its resolution.

However, there are things I didn't like. Joe gets a resolution, yes, but in the hurry to wrap up its threads before the end of the book I felt like the other inhabitants of Joe's fantasy were left way, way out in the cold. Oh, sure, we get the basic resolution and anyone who's read a fantasy novel or a sprawling space opera can write their own finish if they really want it but I was left wondering what became of the inventor with the flying ship? What happened to the boy giant? Were all the brother rats dead? All of them? And what about the queen? We get snatches of a sense of resolution for some of them but I wanted... well, I wanted an epilogue for that world. I realize that would require access to that world without Joe as a medium and that such access would go against the whole story itself, but that doesn't stop me from wanting it.

Speaking of Joe's mediumship of that world - and I don't mean as a spiritual medium, though, come to think of it, I do; rather, I mean as a physical medium of transmission, like a telephone wire or a TV antenna - I think it's time for me to buff my knuckles against my internet lapel and simply say that I am highly satisfied that my original assertion that Grant Morrison was writing a story about someone's initiation into shamanism seems to have plenty of evidence still in its favor.

In many cultures the traditional shaman - male or female - was someone who had endured a trial, usually one that threatened their lives, often in the form of a lightning strike or a nearly fatal illness and endured that trial. It is believed, in many shamanic cultures, that the shaman's experience of brushing so close to their own death has opened the spirit world to them and that upon their return to vitality they somehow retain that access. They become the intercessors in their communities, reaching out to and interacting with spirits good, bad and indifferent to solve the problems and plagues of the mere mortals around them. Shamanism is no walk in the park and isn't by any wild stretch, in most cultures, also an experience of privilege. Like all the best super hero stories, shamans in the real world are often kept at arms' length by the same people who rely on them for healing and problem-solving. Shamans are assumed to have power and, as many comics show us, power frightens people.

What part of that doesn't describe Joe? The people of his fantasy world call him The Dying Boy. He struggles for eight excruciating issues with his own imminent physical death and for seven of those issues we see him flounder in one attempt after another to find the thing he knows can cure him. He's already a bullied outcast in the "real" world and the moment he arrives in the world of besieged innocence - a world full of innocent spirits cut down by the tyranny of death and worry in narrative parallel to the death of Joe's father and his entry into his teens - he's seen as an outsider, dangerous, constantly hunted. What happens when he survives his ordeal and returns? The spirit world delivers to him the power to heal his mother's biggest practical problem. When the letter flutters out and he reads it, I get goosebumps all up and down my arms. Sure, maybe it's a little too angel-gets-its-wings for some people. I don't know, I'm not saying anyone has said that to me, but it did occur to me that there are people for whom that would be just a touch too tidy. To those people, I say thbthbthbthbthbthpth. I raspberry that shit down to the ground. Joe's finding of that letter is the external step necessary to the story because it confers meaning on the whole thing. Joe is now, in a way, his mother's shaman. Maybe he never does anything like that again. Maybe we don't get a resolution for the dwarves and the inventors and the monks and the queen and the rats and all the rest because Joe never steps foot in that world again. Right then, though, for that day, Joe is the one shaman who can reach into the land of Death and rescue goodwill, certainty, confidence and love. It seems, from one perspective, like an awful lot to go through to find a letter that will lead to a deed, yes, but as shamanic initiations go it's pretty much exactly what to expect and at the same time extremely surprising. It isn't how I would have predicted the book would end but it completely works and it's presented in just the right degree of tension to the surroundings. For all that the book relentlessly feels autumnal, Joe is breathing new life into his and his mother's circumstances. The role of the shaman is to produce the unexpected cure at one's darkest hour, to struggle in proportion to the matter at hand; that's also his power and Joe wields it well.

I mentioned the "real" meaning of the title, and again, I point to shamanism. I mean, sure, yes, literally, according to Merriam-Webster, "barbarian" means "of or relating to a land, culture, or people alien and usually believed to be inferior to another land, culture, or people," and that certainly describes Joe from the perspective of the residents of his fantasy. There's an obvious irony for the reader since we would think of Joe as the civilized one compared to basically every other type of denizen that world offers us, but there's also an irony in that we think of shamanic cultures as, often, barbaric and yet here's a modern British schoolboy becoming one. I don't even think that means anything, per se, except that it's yet another way to think twice about the contents of the book. It's one more way for Morrison to make us pause and consider what he's saying. I'll never be smart enough to view this from all possible angles and glean all possible meaning but the ones I notice I really like.

The collection will surely be out for the holidays if not sooner and I was interested to read last summer, when the series was not quite or maybe just past halfway printed, that there was already a movie in the works. I won't bother with the knee jerk catty remarks about the updated Clash of the Titans. If any comic I've read in the last ten years has cried out for a film treatment, this is it. I welcome it. If it's even remotely halfway decent then I will consider it a tremendous victory. This book has a lot to think about, a lot that even a dedicated reader might not capture without significant time. A film that gets finished and edited and released is going to be a huge accomplishment no matter how far short it falls of the mark already set by the original itself.