I reviewed the first half of Elsewhere 2.5 years ago, but today we're looking at the last issue. Having found a doorway back to Earth, Amelia Earhart and DB Cooper step through and find themselves facing a bunch of soldiers and guns.
Kept under observation for a month, an officer with a lot of ribbons on his chest finally explains to Earhart it's the year 2018. While she and Cooper (which we learn from a partially redacted psych profile is not his real name) try to adjust, Earhart spots a native of Korvath talking with a scientist.
A little arm-twisting gets the guy to spill the beans. Some hikers stumbled across a part, the government built a facility around it, stabilized it, and sent troops in. They captured a native and eventually came to an arrangement: the U.S. keeps troops out, and receive an elixir that promotes cell regeneration. Find it hard to believe the government hadn't already gone back on their word and just conquered the place. Or at least given whichever side offered the sweetest deal weapons to help seize/maintain power.
But the scientists did want to study a Korvathian, so this elder sent Gwenore through, and told her beloved, Earhart's pal Cort, a bullcrap story that she'd been abducted. Earhart and Cooper make the scientist take them to Gwenore. Cooper knocks the nerd out, and they try to reach the portal, but encounter some soldiers.
Not much of a problem for Gwenore, and they send her back home. Given a choice between arrest or life free on an alien world, Earhart and Cooper run through the portal, using another grenade to destroy the Stargate-looking thing stabilizing the portal and saving Korvath from the perils of imperialism. Hooray!
Earhart and Cooper reunite with Cort and Gwenore's people. Meyrick, who made the deals with the U.S., chooses exile over what I assume was going to be a painful execution. Have to imagine if the book had continued he would have popped up allied with some new group of troublemakers. And the last we see of Earhart and Cooper is them flying the big gargoyle-looking creatures while Earhart promises maybe she'll tell us about more of their adventures some day. But as CCR once noted, someday never comes. At least it hasn't in the subsequent six years.
{4th longbox, 75th comic. Elsewhere #8, by Jay Faerber (writer), Sumeyye Kesgin (artist), Ron Riley (colorist), Thomas Mauer (letterer)}
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