Was it me, or did "4 Kids..." end abruptly?

When I first read a write up of Tyler Boss, Thomas Mauer, and Matt Rosenberg's "4 Kids Walk into a Bank" back in April of 2016 (or thereabouts) I thought it sounded fun and different and would be something I wanted to check out. I like the idea of sequential art being used to tell different kinds of stories.

The miniseries covers

My son wasn't even born yet. When the second issue came out, the possibilities, while known mostly from the outset, were going to be teased out with a kind of artistic judiciousness that speaks to great art.

My excitement hadn't cooled exactly by having to wait months for the third issue, and once we readers found out there had been a family health emergency with the writer, Matthew Rosenberg's, father, the delay made sense, but I was left wanting maybe more than could be delivered.

Another few months went by waiting for the fourth issue, and by the time it ended, it seemed like if we ever got to the fifth and final issue, TONS of work would have to be done to wrap up the story.

But that's not to say I wasn't enjoying the hell out of it. Double negatives aside, it was fantastic and exciting and all I wanted from Out There storytelling. The art was beautiful if a touch anachronistic and the colors were that wonderful marriage of dazzling and muted that is almost never even attempted these days.

The last issue arrived a few more months later, much to my surprise at my LCS, and my son is walking and babbling and getting into all sorts of shit. It's only after he goes to bed that I ever get anytime to read anything, colorful comics especially, and I devoured the last issue like a starving person.

Only it came and went quicker than its forty pages of heft would suggest.

The characters all seemed to be older and more mature, but that's probably my own projection of the time between issues, but that alone seems weird. It's not like years passed.

Anyway, the opening scene, instead of the kids' game setting the scene, it's the finale of the robbery. The story backs up and the robbery goes down, and the scene is essentially an action movie montage, but that's all any comic is, right? It goes by, Berg is shot, Paige shoots a cop, and in the last panel years have gone by and she's being released form prison and being greeted by two of her pals and her father. "I'm so sorry, dad." The end.

I guess it couldn't have ended any other way, and I guess I'm really just bummed out by my own reaction. It's silly to be disappointed in the ending, because, really, that's the only way it could have ever ended.

Maybe I just expected more because of the cleverness from earlier in the series, and that would be a me problem.

READ IT if you haven't yet...you won't be disappointed...or maybe you will be, but who's counting?