Advanced Review: It’s Game Over in 'Masterminds' #5
MASTERMINDS #5
Release Date: July 1, 2026
Creative Team
Writer/Creator: Zack Kaplan
Artist: Stephen Thompson
Colorist: Thiago Rocha
Letterer: Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou
Publisher: Dark Horse Comics
Review
Back when I reviewed the first issue, I called Masterminds an “unsettling thriller” and it hasn’t stopped since. It’s a book that took the gamification of ambition and turned it into a literal contest with people dying for real. The book’s pitch was easy to summarize, but Kaplan was always after something more. Five issues later, Edward Hale, the overlooked Blazestar programmer who talked his way into auditioning for a secret society of tech-industry power players, reaches the game’s final level. The finale puts him face-to-face with the people who have been running him in circles and pulling strings behind the scenes.
So much of this issue's pleasure comes from watching the final act pay off threads that have been hanging since the debut. The lingering threads, about who Edward could trust and how much of his ordeal was a game versus something with a body count, get answers that pay off. The book has been circling one idea from the start, that you cannot just keep your head down, do good work, and wait for the system to reward you, and the finale forces Edward to put that belief to the test. The climax is tense and exciting.
Stephen Thompson's art has been such an important part of landing those emotions. His style has always been grounded and erred on the ordinary on purpose, so the danger feels like it could be happening to someone you know right now. There's a full-page sequence built around Edward navigating the girders of an unfinished high-rise that makes you stop and gasp. It is a showcase for how much story Thompson can stage in a single image. His paneling lets the story unfold as if it were a Hollywood blockbuster.
Thiago Rocha plays with colors to drown the society's whole world in an oppressive red, a signature look he’s used to mark the moments when Edward becomes entangled in the game. Rocha keeps finding new ways to make that palette feel suffocating rather than repetitive. Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou's lettering holds it all together, especially the running caption voice that frames the book as a kind of in-game narration.
From the series debut on, Kaplan has used Edward's puzzle-solving as a parallel for unrestrained ambition and highlight what winning costs, and this issue follows that through to completion instead of settling for a perfectly happy ending. Masterminds #5 closes out Zack Kaplan and Stephen Thompson's tech-world thriller with the same exhilarating tension that’s made the entire series utterly addictive.
Rating: 5/5
