Given that the title has been around for 500 issues and is largely about a family of scientific explorers, the most impressive aspect of "Hereafter" might be that Waid has taken the team somewhere they've never been before. On the one hand, this is a tribute to the imagination that has given this title a kick-start, but on the other it's a challenge that Waid and Wieringo don't quite meet for me in this issue. The territory of Heaven is something that should be awe-inspiring and unknowable, but the creative team doesn't quite make me believe it; instead this seems like a strange realm, but not something much weirder than the interior of Galactus's ship or the technological jungles of Wakanda. Given that the team exploring heaven is the thrust of this issue, that makes this a weaker issue than much of the rest of the Waid/Wieringo run, but fortunately there's still the same sharply observant characterization and another shocker ending, so my minor disappointment is tempered with plenty of enjoyment and admiration.
Heaven has been portrayed before in comics, usually in the Vertigo line and most notably in Grant Morrison's JLA, but this is something different. Most of the appearances of Heaven occur in books about godly or spiritual beings who wouldn't be taken aback by its surroundings, but this story is about a group of human adventurers invading Heaven. Waid hints at the uneasiness of the whole thing with Sue, but I never really feel like the team is in real danger or real awe, and while Wieringo does a pretty good job with the mysterious angels, like the "mystical Doom" of "Unthinkable," his art is a little too cartoony to really portray a more horrific aspect.
However, while this issue doesn't have the heightened sense of wonder that I think Heaven should have, it does still have the same sense of wonder that Waid and Wieringo have brought to the book. While not terrifying or intimidating, the splash of the angelic hordes is impressive, and Waid does a pretty good job of taking each member of the team through their own personal heaven, as always indicating a fair amount of characterization through exterior developments. I particularly liked the subtle touch conveyed by Wieringo's artwork (which I only caught on re-reading) that Reed's face is fixed in Sue's heaven, as that's fairly telling.
In addition to the big superhero weirdness that has defined Waid's tenure on this book, this story is also leavened with plenty of meaningful dialogue. Johnny's riffing on the nature of heaven cracked me up, but it's the more serious moments that really stand out. The confrontation between Johnny and Reed reveals some pretty key information about the amount of blame going around between these two, and Sue standing up to her husband and giving him the "Frakenstein" talk is also a very well-written scene.
"Hereafter" chapter two is a solid enough read, and Wieringo is doing some of the best artwork he's done throughout the series, but it is the final few pages that really kick the story into high gear. I suspect that part three of this story will be a lot of payoff for the somewhat enigmatic, arrogant Reed that we've seen ever since the tail end of "Unthinkable," and I was taken aback by the revelations on the last couple of pages that lead the story down that path.
