"The End" Week: Xander in Lost Universe #8!

I'm trying to get a head start this year, so this fine September morning I'm trying to grind out the first of this year's "The End" posts on the last issues of various comics. And today we start with a title that already had one, but the publisher apparently went under before it could get a third relaunch: from 1996, Xander in Lost Universe #8, "Dark Angel Descending" Written by Ron Fortier, art by Ron Randall.

Sometimes, I'll go out of my way to pick up the last issue of a series, in the hopes that the story will get wrapped up with a neat little bow. No dice this time: just in time for the last issue, we get the secret origin of the title's Big Bad/Bad Girl, Sensua. Although she appeared to be a woman with a penchant for leather jumpsuits and open tops, sadism, and universal domination; here it's revealed that Sensua was actually an energy being, dating back nearly to the start of the universe. After she devours one of the alien Wehni, she becomes addicted to their "nearly limitless power" and wants to consume the entire race. She hunts them for about a billion years or so, but the Wehni had long ago escaped to a "Lost Universe" she couldn't reach. Still, Sensua notices humanity and other races evolving; and while they were powerless and feeble, they were inventive...

Merging with an unborn baby, Sensua is able to take human form, although her mother seems to notice her evil immediately. Along with a genius-level intellect, Sensua also discovers (quickly, and easily) how to manipulate men; even using her wiles to start an intergalactic war. From there, behind the scenes, she creates the Federation Plan*Net; all part of her plan to use humanity to find the Wehni. Six hundred years later, the framing device for this issue is Sensua telling her story to a cat burglar, but he's merely a creation of her power, something for her to talk to until she gets bored.

The Lost Universe titles were based on notes from Gene Roddenberry, so I couldn't say how much of this was based on his work, or was Fortier's creation. I know Roddenberry's Andromeda also featured a Starfleet/Federation analog that didn't entirely live up to its ideals, but a nearly omnipotent femme fatale doesn't seem like the type of detail he would've included. This issue also featured part five of Tekno/Big's crossover "The Big Bang" (referred to as "The Big Crossover," in house ads) but while six first issues and a #0 were planned for April 1996, I'm not sure they were ever published! You could kind of tell they were hemorrhaging money, since their first issues had Bill Sienkiewicz covers, then Jae Lee, then whoever...

I had considered blogging the rest of the series before getting to this issue, but it wasn't great: every time it seemed to settle on a direction, it would shift just as quickly.