The more I look at the pile whenever I’m in my room, it only grows larger. Even after all of these articles, it has only increased. If I’ll have any New Year’s Resolution, it’ll be to finally complete that pile and have my shelf space finally open again. And for this week, I’m digging deep into a portion of the pile that I covered too long ago and finally realized that the series had ended. We’re finally getting to the end of Rogues by Joshua Williamson, Leomacs, Mathes Lopes, Jason Wordie, and Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou.

A decade has passed for Captain Cold and he’s scraping up just enough to live. The rest of the Rogues have scattered to the wind and, if they do make any contact, can be tossed right back into prison for their past crimes. But Leonard Snart has been studying in that decade–scouring maps, reading up on lore, following leads and rumors–for the final score that will change the lives of him and his Rogues: the gold hoard in the center of Gorilla City. But even after all of that careful planning, Captain Cold, Golden Glider, Bronze Tiger, the Tickster, Mirror Master, Heatwave, and Magenta are confronted with Gorilla Grodd and all of the violence his city can rain down upon them.

From the offset of this series, I had assumed this was only going to be a heist comic. We’d see the gathering of the team, the planning, the execution, the complication, and the eventual success–the old team still had it and could pull off that last job. But instead what Rogues gives us is more of a character study of Leonard Snart. We see him at his lowest at the opening–barely able to make a living, being demeaned by his bosses, barely trusted by his friends and family–and we see him rise into a leader of his band of thieves. But then there’s the core of who he is that causes the complications. Snart is, at his core, a man who uses the title of a  “blue-collar villain” as the facade to hide a selfish and bitter old man.. He believes he’s owed more than what he’s been given in life and everyone around him–from confidants to his own sister–is another step to finally escape his spiral of misery. And it’s his obstinate stubbornness that finally leaves him alone with nothing, bleeding out in Gorilla City. All of that time and effort poured into a pipe dream with only a double-digit body-count to show for it.

Rogues illuminates what we’ve always liked about the cavalcade of Flash villains–that group of odd misfit villains that only work well when they’re all together–and shows us how their story would actually end. While many of these Black Label stories from DC have given us aged characters that were able to escape their previous lives, Rogues shows us that the only escape from a life mired in a false sense of importance is death.

Get excited. Get studied.

Drew Barth (Episode 331, 485, 510, 651, & 674) resides in Winter Park, FL. He received his MFA from the University of Central Florida.