I could write pages and pages about this issue, but I'll try to keep it short(-ish). Snyder and Soule uses two premises ripped from the headlines as this series' backbone. Over the past few months since this issue was published, I have to say that both scenarios unbelievably became more likely.
The first premise is somewhat obvious. We learn from an information page at the back of the issue that the United States began declining when China called in its outstanding U.S.-currency debt, pushing the United States into a recession. Eight years later, the United States suddenly closed off itself from the rest of the world, using "Air Wall" force-shield technology that DARPA developed. In the ensuing 30 years, no one has heard from America at all. This premise is obviously an extrapolation of the Trump administration's policies, from building the infamous wall with Mexico to the trade war with China. It also isn't that much of a stretch. It injects the series with some serious energy as you're reading about something that could possibly happen in some form in your lifetime (regardless of how unlikely).
But, it's the second premise that went from probably feeling like a remote likelihood in November 2019 when this issue was published to feeling like cinéma vérité in May 2020. The issue opens with a team in a helicopter approaching America's famous Air Wall. Although America has allegedly invited the team to come (more on that later), they're still nervous, since, after all, no one has gotten into America in 30 years. The team is there because the United States offered the Alliance Euro-Afrique and the Pan Asiatic Prosperity Zone a cure for the Sky Plague, which is ravaging both areas. I'm reading this issue under lockdown during the COVID-19 pandemic. This part of the plot obviously takes on more urgency.
We learn more about the Sky Plague in a flashback where someone named Colonel Bukowski recruits a doctor named Claire Graves to join the eventual team. At the time, she's working at a refugee camp in Athens delivering, as Bukowski calls it, highly impressive but highly illegal palliative care. Claire is in the process of trying to save a patient when helicopters spray vapor on the camp, allegedly to help the residents though they all assume (probably rightly so) that it's poison meant to kill everyone before they spread the disease. Claire is annoyed at Bukowksi's interruption and wonders if Bukowski is really there for her brother, though we don't yet know why he would be. But, her patient dies, and she agrees to follow Bukowski after he tells her that America has contacted them about a cure.
In a command center somewhere, the Alliance and Zone are hosting a meeting to show Claire and others experts America's message, from a man calling himself Dr. Samuel Elgin. He says that America is ready to serve as a shining beacon again, and he offers the cure. He offers that the Plague will wipe out everyone in six months, and Claire tells the meeting's participants that she agrees with that timeline. Claire also vaguely recognizes the man, saying that he seems like someone who came to their house a few times when she was a child. She asks her also-present brother, handsome Major Daniel Graves, if he remembers, but he can't remember any more details either. Daniel is there because he's the only person who's ever come close to infiltrating America. We learn that he and Claire's parents sent them outside America when they were children.
The Alliance and the Zone plan to send a joint team to negotiate with the Americans for a care. Joining Bukowski, Claire, and Daniel at the table and on the mission are: Ace Kenyatta, an expert on American society to serve as a cultural translator; Valentina Sandoval, a journalist to record the mission; and Chang Enlou and Janet Worthington, senior diplomats from the Zone and the Alliance. (We learn that the two groupings hate each other so much that Janet notes the fact that she and Enlou hadn't poisoned the other rone within minutes is a sign how seriously they're treating the issue.)
It's this team on the helicopter that approaches America in the first few pages...and promptly gets shot down. Claire convinces an always-skeptical Daniel to take the group to a flashing light that Valentina's drone saw while Bukowski tries to fix the helicopter. The group finds the light is coming from an old TV, and Daniel isn't sure if it's a lure or a warning. Either way, we start to get the real story when they look over the cliff and see...chaos. It's a Mad Max-esque gathering of possibly mutated humans wrapped in thermal-shielding bandages accompanied by definitely mutated animals. The team watches in horror as some mutants drag Bukowski before their leader, who looks like a mummy riding a mutated bison. He orders the bison to bite off Bukowski's feet as, in an inverse black-and-white speech bubble, he declares, "no foreign boots shall ever set foot on American soil." The team flees to the other side of the ridge, only to discover an even larger flotilla of mutants coming their way. (The flotilla flies the same flag Ace noted when they first saw the mutants on the other side of the ridge, a red-and-blue "X.")
Someone dressed in an outfit reminiscent of the Young Avengers' Patriot then appears and offers to lead them to safety. Daniel is skeptical until the guy shows a patch of the real American flag. He informs the team that the Destiny Man is behind the flotilla; his lieutenant was the mummy who ordered Bukowski's feet eaten. The team follows him into his underground bunker where they see other humans like him. The man knows who Claire and Daniel are and brings them into a smaller cave alone. He jokingly calls it his Oval Office and shows them a map of America. He says they'll go on the "Spiral Walk" and reveals that he knows their names because the prophecy told him about them. (Uh-oh.) When they ask about the message that America sent, he says that he doesn't know anything about it, which is troubling because he reveals that he's Sam Elgin and he wants you (them) to save America.
Snyder and Soule are obviously engaged in a serious world-building experiment here, so I'm going to give them a lot of time to do it. But, they also engage in a lot of character establishment as well, a sign of Soule's presence on this team, to my mind. In terms of America's decision to close its borders, I'd say the only real question is how the President (assuming that it was the President) got the government's other senior leaders, particularly in the Congress, to agree. But, the fact that Ellis' map shows America divided into zones makes it clear that it might not exactly have been a consensus decision. It's also interesting that no one knows: when the team is discussing the fact that they don't even know if America has a President anymore, Snyder and Soule are making it clear that America was really that isolated. I am definitely intrigued to see where we go from here. At the very least, this series has Netflix series written all over it.
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