Stillwater, Vol. 3: Border Crossing

Stillwater

by Chip Zdarsky, Ramón Pérez (Artist), Mike Spicer (Artist)

The rules have changed, and Daniel now holds a special place in Stillwater. Can Galen’s hold on the town stand up to a new challenger?

Superstar writer CHIP ZDARSKY (DAREDEVIL, THE WHITE TREES) and Eisner Award-winning artist RAMON PEREZ (TALES OF SAND, JANE) conclude their tale of undying horror and intrigue in this unforgettable volume.

Collects STILLWATER #13-18 & THE ESCAPE #1

Genres: Comics, Graphic Novels, Horror, Fantasy, Thriller, Mystery

168 pages, Paperback

First published May 3, 2023

About the author

Chip Zdarsky is a Canadian comic book artist and journalist. He was born Steve Murray but is known by his fan base as Chip Zdarsky, and occasionally Todd Diamond. He writes and illustrates an advice column called Extremely Bad Advice for the Canadian national newspaper National Post's The Ampersand, their pop culture section's online edition. He is also the creator of Prison Funnies and Monster Cops.

Source: Wikipedia.

Reviews

[Oscar · Rating 3 out of 5]

Best volume out of the series.

[James · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.25 stars. So the Stillwater Escape #1 has the characters sitting around a campfire telling stories about people who were believed to have escaped Stillwater. Pretty cool issue. As the story moves towards the finale, we see Galen and company take their new knowledge off being able to move the border, and try to absorb the next town over, Coldwater. It doesn’t go as smoothly as they would have liked. Those people revolt. We also learn how the “still” or not being able to die in Stillwater started which has a tragic jacked up connection to one of the characters. The end had me like, really? We just gonna put it out there like that? What happens now? Pretty good vol 1 and 2 and this, a just ok ending.

[Shannon · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ignore my star rating and total score, the ending was terrible and contrived.

Individual issue reviews: #13 | #14 | #15 | #16 | #17 | #18 | The Escape

Total review score: 2.6

[Nancy · Rating 3 out of 5]

This volume brings the series to a close and includes a one-off chapter that tells the story of three others who escaped town over the years (that used different artists). Galen has become even more vicious as Stillwater’s mayor than the previous one, and his original idea of letting children leave town to grow up is erased when he traps the neighboring town in immortality, just to give Stillwater inhabitants more people and experiences. He rules with an iron fist when the town of Coldwater tries revolting. Daniel, Laura, Tanya and Clara continue fighting for freedom from this curse, and Clara reveals how she inadvertently started it all back during the Civil War era. This explanation came out of left field and didn’t really make sense, but let’s move on. Daniel is fashioned into a messiah figure and preaches non-violence but most do not listen. The conclusion came rather abruptly, with Galen being forced to acknowledge that immortality isn’t worth all the violence and unhappiness, and a truce of sorts is worked out.

This series kept the same creative team of author Chip Zdarsky, artist Ramon Perez and colorist Mike Spicer which I appreciated. The art is solid with especially good covers, and includes interesting panel placements and good likenesses of small-town inhabitants. The coloring is subdued and fits the narrative of immortality dragging on, with no new experiences or people livening their lives up. I thought this trilogy was interesting, with some good commentary on how being caught in immortality became a curse instead of a gift. The conclusion didn’t quite stick the landing, but overall, I found this series thought-provoking.

This review (plus V2) can be found on my blog: https://graphicnovelty2.com/2023/11/0...

[Rod Brown · Rating 2 out of 5]

I only read this out of a completion compulsion. I didn't much care for the first two volumes, and this one is more of the same. Thin characters spend a lot of time doing violence to each other as the immortality concept at the center of the series just gets frittered away.

It also demonstrates the danger of explaining the backstory to an eerie mythology. The explanation here is just silly and pathetic.

The final page implies this series could resurrect like its characters, but I shall not return to it again if it does.


FOR REFERENCE:

Originally published in single magazine format as Stillwater #13-18 and Stillwater: The Escape #1 (one-shot).

Contents: Chapter Fourteen / Chip Zdarsky, writer; Ramón K. Perez, artist; Mike Spicer, colorist -- The Escape: The Prisoner / Jason Loo, writer and artist -- The Escape: Live to Tell / Andrew Wheeler, writer; Soo Lee, artist; Dee Cuniffe, colorist -- The Escape: Matrimony / Ethan Young, writer and artist; Dee Cuniffe, colorist -- Chapter Fifteen / Chip Zdarsky, writer; Ramón K. Perez, artist; Mike Spicer, colorist -- Chapter Sixteen / Chip Zdarsky, writer; Ramón K. Perez, artist; Mike Spicer, colorist -- Chapter Seventeen / Chip Zdarsky, writer; Ramón K. Perez, artist; Mike Spicer, colorist -- Chapter Eighteen / Chip Zdarsky, writer; Ramón K. Perez, artist; Mike Spicer, colorist

[Emre Yavuz · Rating 2 out of 5]

Daha kötü bitirilemezmiş. Hiçbir şey anlamadım kitabın sonunda.

[Zedsdead · Rating 4 out of 5]

Daniel's failure to die when executed outside the border leads to a mad scramble; some see him as a messiah, others as an existential threat. Galen decides to shake things up and bring something fresh to Stillwater's residents--by forcibly incorporating a neighboring town. And we finally learn how the curse of Stillwater came to be.

A decent end to the series. The climax itself felt limp to me--I don't see the conflict resolving on the strength of what was written. But the grand reveal, the secret history of Stillwater, that hit like a cannonball. And the final page just sings.

Plot points:

--Daniel walks out of his execution pyre, because back in Stillwater his allies had just redrawn the town's border to include that area.
--Daniel, Laura, and Tanya leave town long enough to change their appearance, then return to proselytize for change, for Stillwater as a sinful test that the town has failed.
--Galen buries Clara alive to extort compliance out of Daniel.
--Daniel stabs the gravedigger before digging Clara up...and the gravedigger stays dead.
--(REVEAL: Clara was born in the 1840s. To save her son during the Civil War, she made a deal with an angel (but really a demon) that 'no child of Stillwater will perish'. A battle between immortal Union and Confederate soldiers lasted for days, until Clara was buried alive as a witch. People resumed dying normally, and records were dismissed as legends. In 1985 Clara finally escaped her grave and Stillwater's blessing/curse began.)
--Galen redraws the magic map to include neighboring Coldwater. He tells the residents he's giving them a gift, and he enforces his 'gift' with bullets, fire, and live interment.
--The Coldwaterians rebel en masse. A truckload of Coldwater children escapes, and Ted finally does something noble, sacrificing himself to save the kids from Stillwater assassins.
--Daniel stops the battle by...preaching about fear while getting dismembered, until Galen--filled with remorse--collapses into his arms. |:-/
--Clara erases the border of Stillwater on the map, and Daniel realizes that with the border gone...the whole world is immortal. FIN
--(This actually strikes me as a horrific ending. What about those of us who don't WANT to be immortal? What about the nutters who would use immortality to just torture a victim forever?
Isn't death sometimes a freedom, an escape? Forcing immortality on the entire world seems like a terrible abuse. C'mon, Daniel, look how it worked out in Stillwater.

[Abigail Pankau · Rating 1 out of 5]

The kids have taken control and have changed the borders to include the nearby town of Coldwater. They are hoping things will be better with this change, but is it just more of the same violence? There are always stories of people escaping, but is there any truth to them? Is there any escape for any of them now?

Ug. This volume doesn’t make sense. Characters are doing the opposite of what they’d been doing in the first volumes (like, Galen wants to escape to grow up, but now he’s forcing everyone to stay in town?), and we find out the reason behind the immortality, but that actually makes more plot-holes (like, if the town’s boundaries were set because of magical blood-ink, how were they able to make changes with pencil lines or erasers?). It’s all just a lot of gratuitous violence and big ideas that aren’t actually that big. Ug.

[Matthew Ward · Rating 3 out of 5]

I did really enjoy these issues, but I felt like the release timing for these issues dragged out a bit as well as the pacing of the story within the issues, as well. This one might fare better with a series re-read someday.

[Elizabeth · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm so glad that I reread the first two volumes before reading this, because I know it went a long way towards my enjoyment of this finale. There were aspects here that I didn't care for (the whole "messiah" angle was weird and not my cup), but as a whole there was a lot I loved here that redeemed it for me. The explanation for how the town came to be in its current predicament was engaging and really tied into the whole mothers protecting their children thing that a lot of the rest of the story (and part of the core premise, even) had going on. I know that the ending was really divisive (and seems to be largely responsible for the much lower rating this volume has here), and as much as I would have liked to see a happy ending, I still enjoyed how subtle and unsettling they made such an apocalyptic conclusion. Also The Escape issue that's included where they tell stories around a fire about people they heard escaped in the past was really fun and interesting, and a great use of guest artists and writers.

I definitely enjoyed this series and would recommend checking it out!

[Damian Herde · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the third and final volume of the Stillwater series, about a small town where people can’t die.

The old regime was overthrown, and the council of children stole the loyalty of the mercenaries to impose their own style of fascism.

The idea that the immortality was tied to a line marked around the town map is explored with an expansion of the line to encompass the neighbouring village, and a hostile takeover to ensure the new town follows their rules.

The origin story of the immortality is revealed to be a christian-based, deal-with-the-devil thing, which just cheapens the whole story. And the constant partisan violence and shootings are such a tiring Americanism at this point that I was done with the series whether this was the final book or not.

The series setup was great, but just felt like the story potential was only explored in one direction - violence.

[Matt · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5/5 for this arc

book overall - issues #1-18 = 4/5 Stars

[Mark · Rating 3 out of 5]

Glad they wrapped this series up. It ended better than I thought it would but it was pretty repetitive at times. Very violent but I guess that’s the point when you can heal any wound.

[Lio · Rating 3 out of 5]

Definitely the best of the trilogy, and the main character finally became interesting, but I found the conclusion lackluster. I had an entirely different idea for the resolution to the main conflict and I was disappointed that the characters didn't seem to discuss or consider it at all.

[oh-deanna · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars

[David Dalton · Rating 5 out of 5]

Who wants to live forever? A fitting end to a great series that is just begging to be made into a series on Hulu, Max, or Paramount +.

[Dakota Morgan · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Stillwater series crashes to a conclusion with one (1) fresh idea: Galen leaps at the idea of manually expanding Stillwater's borders and attempts to annex the nearby town of Coldwater. Predictably, the citizens of Coldwater are not eager to be immortal and leave their lives outside of town behind!

So we get more fighting. Lots more! Daniel and his allies leave for a while, then return with God in their hearts in hopes that will change the mind's of the villains (surprise, it doesn't). The "why" behind Stillwater is revealed and it's...fine. I guess I didn't know what to expect there. One fun twist with the reveal is that any time the lady who first created the map is buried underground, people can die! Oopsie-daisy!

There's a big battle at the conclusion between immortal people. It's all quite fiery and speechy. This series started strong, but piddled away it's goodwill by transitioning to fast-paced twists and unnecessary gunfights rather than building characters and having tense conversations.

[Sean · Rating 3 out of 5]

RECAPS ARE IMPORTANT!! EVERY COLLECTION SHOULD HAVE ONE!!

Now that that's out of the way, Stillwater ends with a slight limp. Chip Zdarsky has some really interesting ideas but I think the ending was never in sight. Here, the ending and why it happened still doesn't ring true. It was underwhelming. The book wasn't bad but it was definitely lacking. The art by Ramon Perez was good but the coloring bothered me. Overall, a decent series ends on a downward trajectory showing the old adage is still true, the hardest thing in writing is to end a story.

[Jake · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really wanted to like this series. Chip Zdarsky taking the premise of Tuck Everlasting, the boring book I had to read in 6th grade, and making it interesting. I was hooked, and bought every single of this series. However, around issue 11 or 12, or maybe when they did the stand alone issue, the story unraveled for me. It went from having a tight cast of characters and clear motivations, to everyone running around and things getting murky and immortal children suddenly running the show. And I’m giving it two stars because Rámon Pérez did a great job on the art, as well as Mike Spicer on the colors, and there are some interesting ideas. My favorite is the idea of the immortality being linked to the town borders. But this story feels like Chip devised the premise and ending first, and then added 12 issues of act 2 in to sell some more copies. And I’m going to be a little bit of a tool and play internet expert who pretends they know what they’re talking about, in this case, Canadian comic book creators, and guess that Chip might be a little overstretched right now. As of May 2023, he’s writing Batman, Daredevil, Kaptara, Public Domain, and probably some other stuff in the background. And I feel like if he was writing less stuff, than maybe he’d have put more effort into clearly telling this story. And also answering the questions from the letter pages. The RC Coda in Fire Power is incredible. Skybound should do that for all of their books!

[47Time · Rating 3 out of 5]

All that running around only to mess the whole world up. You should never mess with the supernatural. It'll come back and bite you in the rear.

Daniel, Tanya and Laura are trying to leave Stillwater. Galen figures out how they changed the town limits to keep Daniel alive and intends to expand them further to encompass the neighbouring town of Coldwater. The expansion increases the challenge to keep the people pacified and prevent them from contacting the outside world. Worse, the rebel trio return with a message of hope and faith that the outside is better for them, which adds more unrest.

Clara, one of Daniel's followers, is why people in Stillwater aren't dying. During the Civil War she sold her soul to the devil to protect her sons from death, but was unaware that the whole town would be free from murder. She was buried for her dealings for 120 years. She never died and rose from her grave a mentally damaged woman.

The townspeople of Coldwater revolt in the streets against their Stillwater oppressors. A truck tries to take the children away. Galen decides to change the borders again to cover only Stillwater and massacre everyone, including the children. Everyone soon realises that the only way to end the bloodshed is to work together. When the fighting dies down, Clara erases the town's borders in the hope of lifting the curse. Instead, it expands to the whole world. That's the best ending they could think of?

[Lisa Buchanan · Rating 2 out of 5]

This two-star rating is for the series overall as much as this final volume. After a promising start, the series became repetitive and not in an affecting “this is how the monotony of eternal life would feel” way. I was hopeful with the expansion to Coldwater that this would make things more interesting, but it was just more of the same. Again, maybe that’s part of the point being made, but it makes for a tedious read.

With the breaks I took between reading each volume of this series, I could’ve used a recap at the beginning of each to be reminded of where things left off. I’d forgotten who Clara was, which probably impacted my reading of this volume given her crucial role in the finale.

[Ανδρέας Μιχαηλίδης · Rating 1 out of 5]

What is up with writers, especially in horror, not knowing how to end their stories or flat out refusing to? Stephen King has set the major precedent (and that is why I only like his early books), but in the end, he is Stephen King - it is almost part of his brand.

This here? It is clumsy. It introduces elements with no build-up. shoddy explanations, and after more of the same with last volume, simply ends the story in a "whatever happened to the world" cliffhanger. It might work in a one-shot, maybe even a 6-issue mini series, but after three volumes? I think the reader will feel cheated.

[Alex Sarll]

"Don't let your actions be ruled by some sunk cost fallacy", says the rebel to the tyrant leader of the immortal town (who happens to have a child's body, because no ageing). Which I worried might also be a finger-wag at me for persevering. But - especially in the special with short stories from other creators - it felt as if this concluding volume, unusually for a finale, gave the concept a little more room to breathe. Even the explanation for the phenomenon wasn't the disappointment answered mysteries often are.

[Brianna · Rating 3 out of 5]

My only gripe is that we didn't see The Three escaping Stillwater. They're at the beginning of the story, then we shift to some short stories, and boom they've escaped somehow. Seems like an important plot development to show since such a big part of the story is the townspeople being unable to leave. That aside, I did like the end. I was surprised it ended on a cliffhanger, but then I thought about it and came to the conclusion that it's a perfect example of the fear of the unknown, and how that reflects on the characters.

[Rahul Nadella · Rating 2 out of 5]

I saw this ending coming from a mile away. The fact that the last issue ends so abruptly on that moment doesn't help. It's like the story misses out on its most interesting implications by ending right here. As though Zdarsky and company had too much on their plates otherwise, and decided this series needed to go. I didn't dislike the last issue, don't get me wrong. I just sort of feel unfulfilled by it in a way that's probably unfair to the comic. I would still recommend this series to anyone interested, overall it is still a very fun read with many surprising moments during the run.

[Spencer Greenwood · Rating 5 out of 5]

This series really sticks the landing. We get answers and some closure, and most importantly, we get back to the heart of the story, humanity, control, and what it means to live. While this is a violent story and violence is very prevalent in this final volume, volume 2 felt like the violence was the focus. I'm happy that we get back to the purpose and meaning behind the violence and control. This closing section of the story has a message and makes you think, while continuing to be incredibly entertaining.

[Rick Ray · Rating 2 out of 5]

An interesting premise devolves into being a snoozefest. Chip Zdarsky's and Ramon Perez's Stillwater comes to a close, though it's pretty clear this could have ended in 12 issues instead of 18. Perhaps it comes down to Zdarsky being stretched this across several books, but the story feels completely phoned in and the ending was lackluster. Ramon Perez's artwork is pretty though, and Mike Spicer's colors are always great.

[Mark Schlatter · Rating 2 out of 5]

I have really soured on this series from volume to volume with the biggest problem being the large amount of stake-free violence. If your whole cast is immortal with rapid healing powers, you can carry out a large amount of meaningless carnage, and I felt that carnage in this installment overwhelmed most of the characterization and plot.

[Craig · Rating 3 out of 5]

The story just became a bit too tiresome and repetitive, hitting on the same beats over and over again. Good initial idea, but I'm not sure there was ever a real, overarching plan of where to take things. The eternal cycle of violence is somewhat explained in this arc, but it might have been nice to see where the story might go once that cycle is broken. Strong artwork throughout.

[Quentin Wallace · Rating 3 out of 5]

We finally get the big revelation of what caused the immortality, and we also get the end of the series. Honestly, I thought both were a little flat. Not bad, just not as good as I expected. Overall this was a good series, not a great series. It seemed to drag a little, as in the story could have been told in fewer issues.