Die #14 (October 7): This issue is by far the series' best issue, and I had already set that bar pretty fucking high.
It begins slowly, with a diversion. Zamorna heads to the front to march on Eternal Prussia, and Isabelle exposits that the goal of this maneuver is to pull the Prussians from Glass Town and thus enable the Little Englanders to destroy the Forge. Meanwhile, Angela, Chuck, and Matt arrive at Glass Town and are surprised to see the Steel Dragons leaving. On the front, Augustus and Zamorna fight the Steel Dragons. Augustus is hurt, and Zamorna instructs him to teleport to his mother to update her that the plan is working.
In Glass Town, Chuck continues to express concern that Matt is too upbeat for his powers to work fully, another sign that Chuck is the only one who fully understands the game's dynamic. (I say that because every time he gets drunk and irresponsible his teammates criticize him despite the fact that he's doing it to maximize his luck.) Angela, Chuck, and Matt arrive at the Forge to face its defenses as Augustus tells Ash that Little England's attack on Glass Town has begun. (Angela, Chuck, and Matt barely dodged an incoming missile at one point.) Isabelle notes what a good kid August is, and Ash asks what Isabelle sacrificed to the Mourner to carry him to term and if Ash owes her. Isabelle responds that it isn't anything that she ever wanted so I wonder if it means that she can't have children? Isabelle says that she hopes they leave behind something as good as Augustus this time.
Just as Ash thinks they've won, Mistress Woe comes calling. She calls in all her debts and demands that Izzy passes on a message. For reasons that become clear, Mistress Woe urges Isabelle to do it quickly. With no real options, Isabelle asks Bear (the god on whose behalf she had previously destroyed poachers) to send his birds with a message for Matt. In Glass Town, the team is overwhelmed, and Matt acknowledges that it's partially because he isn't sad enough. On cue, the bird arrives and tells Matt that his father has died. Matt explodes with grief, functionally destroying Glass Town.
Chuck helps Angela from the rubble, and Matt demands that she use the last of her Fair gold to transport him to Angria, saying their families need them. Angela resists, since she was going to use the gold to speed hack the Forge. But, Matt tells her that she knows what their responsibilities are, that they've known them for months. She concurs and teleports him. Chuck says that it was a bad decision, but Angela says that they have no good decisions: it was just the one that ensured most of what she cared about happening. Angela then heads to destroy the Forge while Matt arrives at the Knights' temple. The maul of rage calls on him to put aside the sword of grief. Instead, he takes both weapons since he's angry and sad: one for Ash and one for Izzy. The weapons tell him that it is forbidden, but Matt tells them to stop him in one of Hans' best panels in a series filled with excellent panels.
In other words, ho boy, trouble is coming.
Star Wars #7 (October 7): Soule provides us the background that we've been missing regarding Zahra. He reveals that terrorist killed her parents and she joined the Empire. Later, she was one of three cadets jockeying to become Tarkin's protégé. Soule makes it clear that Zahra viewed Tarkin as a father figure, so she's devastated when she fails an assassination mission because she mistakenly thought he figuratively, not literally, meant he wanted the target's head. (As Tarkin later explains, a Tarkin looks a man in the eyes when he cuts his throat.) It also turns out she took out a decoy, and she becomes obsessed with tracking down the real target. When Tarkin has his adjutant tell Zahra to report to HR for reassignment, Zahra steals a shuttle to take out the target herself. Notably, she steals the shuttle as the Death Star is under attack, departing minutes before it is destroyed. In the present, the Fourth Fleet responds to the Seventh Fleet's SOS call, capturing Zahra's fleet - who tracked down the Seventh Fleet after its SOS call -- in a pincer movement. But, it's clear that Zahra has something up her sleeves so we'll see how it goes.
Star Wars: Darth Vader #6 (October 14): I mentioned in a previous review that Pak used the previous arc to remind us how Anakin's actions on Mustafar turned him into Vader. Pak clearly wanted us to come to that conclusion, as this issue shows that the Emperor is worried that Vader didn't fully learn that lesson. Hoping to turn Vader's pain into fear and his fear into anger once again, the Emperor strips Vader of his prosthetic limbs and leaves him on Mustafar. To up the ante, he informs Vader that he cannot use the Force and sends an assassin -- who looks like a cross between Batman and Vader -- after him. You almost feel sorry for him.
The Last God: Songs of Lost Children #1 (October 28): This issue is mostly a hit except for one obvious flaw. It follows Cyanthe and her Aelvan handmaiden Nykeo ten years after the fellowship "defeated" Mol Uhltep.
While Tyr is putting down a rebellion in Tchakatla Tuo, Cyanthe and Nykeo travel the countryside so Cyanthe (in disguise) can get a better sense of the rumors of discontent that she's been hearing. She mostly finds complaints of bad harvests and fair taxes, all ordinary laments, so she decides to return to Tyrgolad. Nykeo convinces her to stop at a nearby house so they don't travel the roads at a night, and a couple with numerous children offers to host them for the night. One of the young boys wears a similar hat as a boy whom the pair saw on the road earlier that day. When Cyanthe mentions it, the mother goes into hysterics. After calming her, the father explains Artom, the boy who Cyanthe "saw," disappeared the previous season. He acknowledges Cyanthe's insistence that she saw the boy, telling her that she wouldn't be the first to see ghosts, given that they loose a few kids every year. When she asks how many kids they have, the father tells her that they care for abandoned children. He suspects many of them are nobles' children. The boy with the hat asks if Cyanthe really saw Artom, and the father encourages him to forget it.
That night, Cyanthe dreams of the baby she lost. A bloody Tyr asks if she also saw the Black Crown over the baby's head. Cyanthe asks where the baby went, and we learn that it died in childbirth. Cyanthe awakens to discover the boy left in the night and takes Nykeo with her to get to the bottom of the disappearances. They stumble upon a nest full of small Aelvan and human bones and discover the boy's hat. They then discover the boy, much to Cyanthe's relief. He then grows numerous heads and eyes, revealing the monster. We learn that it's a Gryndel, a monster who wears the form of its victims to lure in new victims. The Gryndel escapes, and the pair follow it to the village. A panicked Nykeo bursts into the room to discover the father with only one baby left, the one she had rocked the previous night after the father put the hysterical mother to bed. Cyanthe puts together that the baby is Nykeo and Tyr's. Moreover, given the blue eyes on the Gryndel, Cyanthe realizes that the "abandoned" children here were all Tyr's. Cyanthe then fires an arrow, not at Nykeo but at the father who's actually the Gryndel. It dies, and Cyanthe explains that Nykeo's son only survived because the monster was sated. In the ending narration, we learn that Nykeo subsequently hid the baby in the North or in the slave cradles, likely confirming the child is Eyvindr.
Overall, this issue is stunning in how utterly devastating it is. Kennedy Johnson pulls no punches in depicting various parents' confrontation with the profound grief of losing a child, so much so that I wanted to wake up my own children just to hug them. The only flaw to me is that I'm not sure that I buy Nykeo risking bringing Cyanthe to the parents' house. I guess she thought that they'd be there only briefly, so Cyanthe wouldn't have time to put two and two together. But, it was still a risk that I'm not sure she needed to take. That said, I'm also surprised that Cyanthe let the baby live, knowing what we know about the Black Crown, but that makes sense in terms of Cyanthe as a person.
Transformers '84: Secrets and Lies #4 (October 28): Furman gives up any attempt to tell a story in this issue. It's just a series of barely connected moments that address various discrepancies that he's identified in the various tellings and re-tellings of the Transformers arrival on Earth. His notes at the end of this issue address feedback from folks similarly obsessed with Transformers continuity, making it clear that anyone like me just looking for stories related to the original Transformers wasn't this series' target audience. That said, I think I'm going to re-read the original U.S. series since I picked up a lot of the issues in comic and TPB format a few years ago and haven't had a chance to read them. So I guess some good came from this series.
Undiscovered Country #9 (October 28): This issue is oddly straightforward. The team divides into three groups, all gaining valuable insight into what America has become.
Oddly, Charlotte and Daniel's interactions with their "parents" is the least illuminating. We learn that they're simulacra created from Unity's enormous databank of articles, books, memories, pictures, and videos. Whenever someone plugs into the system, the databank grows. In hearing the explanation, Ace realizes the '43 surge - an enormous power spike in the Pacific Northwest that was so large even the outside world could detect it - happened due to the incredible amount of energy that Unity needs to run. Charlotte and Daniel agree to go with their "parents" because, as founding members of Aurora, they might be able to give them the answers that they need about the cure.
Meanwhile, Jain assures Chang that he hasn't become part of Unity because the security and integration system "bit" him. You have to become a member voluntarily. Ace volunteers, and Jain grants him limited access to Unity, allowing him to use the "diamond desert" (i.e., the nano-material) to re-create his van.
Inside the Graves' home, Charlotte and Daniel learn that the Graves thought that the Sealing would produce a country-wide Unity within ten years. Daniel tells the Graves that his "real" father contacted him with a message, but, when Daniel did what he asked, his father eventually told him that he made a mistake and compromised the plan, at which point the Destiny Man found Daniel. Graves père informs them that they can play back the message for them and the one that Charlotte was also supposed to receive.
In a discussion with Chang and Janet, Jain explains why Aurora's vision wasn't realized. She elaborates on what we saw last issue: each zone would follows its own path but contribute to the overall experiment. For example, Destiny was supposed to provide modified aquaculture in the form of highly production strains of fish and mollusks, Unity would provide the technological advancements, etc. But, eventually, zones likes Destiny (as we heard last issue) were exploiting their resources for themselves and refusing to acknowledge "the center." Before Unity's neural-linking project could unify everyone, the zones' conflicts became too entrenched and Aurora ordered the Second Sealing. Jain is confident they can develop a cure for Sky, but Chang notes that it might be too late because they have to walk the Spiral. Janet notes that it might not need to be that way. Meanwhile, Ace and Valentina reach the end of the zone. Ace tells Valentina more about the '43 surge and how, at the time, they theorized that it was the advent of a wonderful new technology.
Just as Charlotte and Daniel begin to watch the video message from their father, the Destiny Man - who the security and integration system has pulled into some sort of pocket dimension, if you will -- manages to hack into Unity's Sam, who's been taunting him. Suddenly, the hand stopping Ace and Valentina from leaving Unity disappears, and the video Charlotte and Daniel are watching suddenly just screams that they should run.
Also Read: Star Wars: Bounty Hunters #6 (October 21)
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