Thief of Thieves Volume 7: Closure

Thief of Thieves #7

by Brett Lewis, Shawn Martinbrough (Contributor), Adriano Lucas (Contributor)

THIEF OF THIEVES kicks off its final job! Conrad Paulson is dead―or is he? What does a notorious Russian prison have to do with the master thief known as Redmond?

Collects THIEF OF THIEVES #38-43.

Genres: Comics, Graphic Novels, Crime

128 pages, Paperback

Published August 13, 2019

Reviews

[Chad · Rating 3 out of 5]

This gets bogged down in a lesson of how terrorists are funded. It's so freaking convoluted about how oil barons are underreporting oil in exchange for antiquities that were supposedly blown up. It gets tedious real fast. Definitely not up to par with the rest of the series. It's a shame Diggle couldn't have stayed on for the last arc.

[Anne · Rating 2 out of 5]

Boo.
This went to a weird place, stopped being fun, and turned into a somewhat boring lecture on global terrorism and the art world.



Not sure if it ended on such a wet fart because Lewis took over for Diggle, or if this was the ending Kirkman planned out, but it was stupid and it sucked.
It was like it forgot it was a heist caper story and started to try to incorporate Brubaker's Criminal world into the plot. But badly. Not dark enough to be a hardboiled crime story, not zippy enough to keep up with the original vibe.



Endings make or break stories for me, and this one did not live up to its potential.
It's "ok", but I won't be recommending it.
Meh.

[Steve Potter · Rating 1 out of 5]

More dialog than a Tarantino film and an overuse of time jumps make this a tedious, jumbled mess. A poor ending to an otherwise decent series.

[Kurt Lorenz · Rating 2 out of 5]

There are a lot of problems with this volume but the main one is that Brett Lewis didn't understand he was writing for a visual medium. Robert Kirkman, Nick Spencer, James Asmus, and especially Andy Diggle perfectly utilized Shawn Martinbrough in prior volumes to relay story through art, not exposition. I would have rather the series ended on the cliffhanger from last volume than have this mediocre conclusion to an otherwise fantastic series.

[Sean · Rating 2 out of 5]

Oh, what was!?!?! This once great book has diminished to utter drivel. This collection is missing every ingredient that made the book good. The third writer on the book, Brett Lewis, vomits word balloons throughout the book trying to bore readers to death. The absolute only thing worth anything here is the art by Shawn Martinbrough. Overall, a boring mess.

[Aaron · Rating 2 out of 5]

A very wordy and boring end to a series that was very good when it started.

[Robert · Rating 1 out of 5]

Fell off a cliff at the end - overly complicated quickly becomes contrived and boring.

[Sam]

Surprisingly and disappointingly, I kinda hated this book. It's got different authors from the rest of the books in the series and it really shows. Doesn't even feel like it's the same universe. Like this could be a reboot with a new author. But it definitely didn't give the fun heist mystery spirit that imbued the previous books. And there were sooo many words. I can appreciate a wordy comic when it works. But it felt like this book had to say so much because the story wasn't good enough to convey it more simply as the previous books did. Honestly, I skimmed most of the last half of this book and then read the ending, which was better than to just stop reading halfway through, which is what I wanted to do.

Looking back, the series would have been better off ending after Vol 5.

[Paxton Holley · Rating 2 out of 5]

This entry was a little bittersweet. I’ve loved this series, but in this final collection, I feel like in order to top themselves, the writers flew a little too close to the sun.

There’s a lot of story in this one. Plans on plans on plans. Which can be fun for a thief story, but this particular story had so many layers and relied on the reader remembering so much it got confusing and a little hard to follow. And how many fake fights can Redmond and his crew have with each other to fool the person that’s following them?

This was my least favorite collection of the series. Which makes me sad now that it is over.

[June · Rating 1 out of 5]

Great series, awful closure. This volume doesn't even sound or feel like the rest of the series. Way too much exposition and pointless dialogue, and none of the fun retro banter and character tension that made the rest of the series great.

[MeinKampfy · Rating 2 out of 5]

after andy diggle left, the air completely left this balloon. argh.

[Nathaniel R. · Rating 3 out of 5]

The repetition of the formulaic pattern has kind of gotten old for me, from the lens of a paperback reader. The beats all seem very predictable, which takes away a little from the enjoyment. Still, I enjoyed it.

[47Time · Rating 2 out of 5]

That is a lot more text than I'm used to. A lot of it can be skipped, so it's fine. I can barely see the nice pictures underneath all that dialogue... Unlike everything else up to this point, this story shows a less effective Conrad. This time he doesn't just want out of the crime business, he is deathly afraid of it. I guess picking up the soap in a Russian prison does that to a man.

Conrad is still alive. He is being held in a Russian prison. Celia doesn't know this. She intends to get revenge on the people whom she thinks killed Conrad. She has Augustus help her.

Conrad must play by the rules of the prison mob boss if he plans to survive behind bars. As soon as they find out that Conrad is alive, Augustus and Celia devise a plan. Nobody else agrees to help - Russia is too much for them. Huh, I thought they were pros. A daring and confusing plan frees Conrad. He recuperates for several weeks before being willing and able to get revenge.

An even more confusing plan targets the Zubov brothers. If you thought Ocean's Eleven was complex, this is about a hundred times that. At least Ocean's Eleven was funny. Conrad employs the 'divide et impera' tactic - have the brothers fighting each other. Slowly, but surely, he succeeds.

I had to skip most of the latter part. This style of exposition bores the living daylights out of me. I think Conrad activates Gold Rush against Zubov stock and the brothers lose everything, Conrad gives himself up to the authorities to have his family be left alone. No more Raymond. And no more Thief of Thieves, thank Christ.

[Bruno Franco Netto · Rating 2 out of 5]

I love all of Mr. Kirkman's work (The Walking Dead, Invincible, Outcast, Fire Power, Oblivion Song, etc..) but I found Thief of Thieves to be a huge disappointment. The art is great throughout but the constant changes in writers made the book very inconsistent and it never really reached the heights of the aforementioned works in my opinion. This last volume, with a new writer, was particularly disappointing and was honestly hard to even finish. It was boring, confusing and uninspired. Overall, not a great series even if it had its moments, especially early on.

[Bill Coffin · Rating 4 out of 5]

"We don't rob. We thieve."

Conrad Paulson has spent his life executing one daring heist after another as Redmond, the world's greatest thief. But enough years of crime will catch up to anyone, and now that Paulson wants to retire, he's finding a whole lot more loose ends to take care of than he ever imagined. Thief of Thieves is a really fun read - a slick series of caper stories about a master thief, his estranged family, his partner, his crew, the agents on his tail, the crime lords who cross his path and an ever-increasing set of stakes in a world where you can't afford even a single mistake. Much of Thief of Thieves is derivative, borrowing more than a little from the likes of To Catch a Thief and Ocean's 11, but its execution is so good - with tightly told narrative, great characters and terrific artwork throughout - that it doesn't much matter. Over the course of seven volumes, we see Paulson and his world go through an awful lot, and even though it kind of ends up how we think it will, that's all good. There are only ever two destinations for a life of crime, and Thief of Thieves is no different. But the destination isn't the score here. It's the journey. And for us in the audience, Thief of Thieves is quite a score, indeed.

[Jordan · Rating 1 out of 5]

What. Happened. I binge-read Thief of Thieves volumes 1-6 in a few days. Incredibly fun, breezy, popcorn entertainment heist comics. Then I got to volume 7 and it took me two months to read. Because it is incredibly, incredibly, incredibly wordy. And boring. And convoluted. I enjoyed volumes 1-6 so much that after reading 90 pages of volume 7, I actually went back to the beginning and started over because I was so confused and wanted to try to understand what was happening. Around page 70 or so it totally lost me, again.

I didn't even know it was a new writer on this until reading other likeminded Goodreads reviews, but now it all makes sense. This book is completely different in feel, pacing, everything, from the volumes that came before it. It's page after page of massive word balloons with tons and tons of exposition and characters telling you about other characters and an incredibly complicated plan that I kept genuinely trying to grasp but could not.

[Stephen · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the final volume of what has been an amazing series. The writer hand off (from Robert Kirkman to Andy Diggle to finally Brett Lewis) comes to a fulfilling conclusion. I did have my worries it would not feel satisfied, but I felt good closure on a series which I am now recommending to others who will listen. This volume to me shows Conrad Paulson very much an imperfect man, trying to do better but it also shows how all the characters you have come to enjoy, evolving as we all do in life. Was this the best volume? No. Was it well worth the cost of admission? Yes. Buckle up for a fun conclusion that makes me wonder why there are not more graphic novels or trade paperbacks like this.

[Andy Hickman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thief of Thieves. Vol. 7 – CLOSURE
Nobody could possibly survive any of this, beyond realistic, but awesome heist adventure with an intense finale. ****
#38 – “REDMOND! Do you copy?! GODDAMMIT – CONRAD!”
#39 – “CAN YOU DO THAT, CONRAD ..? Can you even REMEMBER who you REALLY are ..?”
#40 – “ – weapon hot, target centering in scope ..” – Celia
#41 – “But we have Goldrush now, none of our real enemies would dare ti challenge us – not even Putin ..”
#42 – “ .. it was a fun bit of stealing up til then, THE GOLDRUSH JOB.” – Sally
#43 – “Well, it’s the only life I’ve ever known .. and I learned it all from the very best.” - Augustus

[Samuel Harris · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've enjoyed this series overall, but this last volume felt like a slog. Several new villains had been introduced in this arc (and maybe the last one), and there was too much time spent on the heist details targeting unfamiliar characters--not enough time spent on closure for the characters we've been following since the beginning. There eventually was some closure in the end, but it wasn't what I was expecting. I know Robert Kirkman created this series and conceived the idea; I kind of wish he'd stayed on as writer for the whole thing!

[Lex V · Rating 2 out of 5]

Holy f***,
What a giant pile of sh**!!
I liked the series so far,last volume finished on a cliff hanger so I was pumped to read the last chapter,they let me down,big time.
It was confusing,not really good and so fuc*** not in the line of what came before….
It’s a shame Kirkman let this series become a derailed giant f**!
I want my money back(and time) Lol
Read volume 1 to 5 (they’re fun,rally)and leave the last 2 ones for your worst enemy.

[James · Rating 5 out of 5]

A nice ending, maybe. A great reversal of money. Recovery specialist.

[Andrew · Rating 1 out of 5]

Absolutely terrible. If you read this series and make it through the almost as terrible vol 4, do yourself a favor and stop at vol 6.

[Kris · Rating 3 out of 5]

Way too many time jumps, backwards and forwards. Way too convoluted.