Cobra Commander #1: Holy shit, I did NOT see that coming. Williamson leaves a lot of questions for us here, befitting Cobra Commander's typically murky background. But what he does reveal is amazing.
In the past, Cobra Commander - or CC, as I'm going to call him - heads up a team of scientists in an underwater kingdom called Cobra-La, where they're investigating some sort of "abomination." The population learns about the research and, appalled, breaks into the lab to stop it. CC dispatches spores that he developed to hold off the mob, but one of the scientists detonates a bomb that kills everyone but CC. He's left terribly scarred, and Cobra-La's doctors heal him with a three-headed snake. He awakens wrapped in bandages, and a woman named Pythona informs him to put on his iconic helmet to cover his shame, which includes a now reptilian eye (I think).
Pythona brings him to the king, Golobulus, who tells him that he found him "lost in the outside world," which I assume means that CC is human and not Cobra-Lan. Golobulus exposits that Cobra-La worships only the organic, so CC and the scientists' research is blasphemous. (I should've seen where we're going here, but I didn't.) Golobulus accuses CC of instigating the riots (possibly so he could use his defense against the rioters to justify Golobulus giving him a leadership position, which he demands here) and orders his men to kill him. He quips that he healed him just to watch him die with his own eyes, letting us everything we need to know about Golobulus.
But CC is CC so he uses insect-like drones to crawl into the guards' bodies and kill them. CC warns Golobulus that Cobra-La's isolation means its resources are dwindling, though his research can save it. To do so, he has to go on a "special mission" to the outside. Golobulus, revealing a reptilian eye like CC's, agrees. CC walks back to the lab and reveals the abomination: a comatose Megatron!
CC exposits that the only thing he's kept from Golobulus is the existence of Cybertron. CC tortures Megatron once again and discovers other energy signatures like his. (I'm not sure why he had to torture him to identify similar energy signatures, but it is what it is.) CC plans to track down the Transformers to explore their energy, which he describes as not just powerful but also "transformative." CC departs, and Megatron opens a menacing eye.
In the present, CC kills a man for his car and, with the minder Golobulus demanded accompany him, heads to what appears to be Zartan's place in the Floridian swamps.
In other words, it's fucking great. The Skybound team is clearly keeping Megatron on ice (literally) before launching him on Earth, giving us time to see other threats build. Right now, I'm most interested in the fact that CC seems genuinely loyal to Golobulus, given that he believes that Golobulus can provide the army CC needs to control the world. It'll be interesting to see how quickly that loyalty is tested.
G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero #303: This issue is pretty straight to the point.
At the Pit, the Joes watch a Revanche helicopter land on Cobra Island for an audience with Serpentor Khan. Alpha-001 proposes a working relationship between the two organizations, though Khan is skeptical since Revanche apparently delivered B.A.T.s to Cobra that he programmed to respond only to Revanche. Alpha-001 talks about the benefit of turning Khan's mutants into cyborgs. A Viper volunteers to be a test subject, and Revanche's surgical bot turns him into a cyborg on the spot.
At the Pit, Duke asks Spirit to prepare for the Khan-Revanche alliance to try to break into the Pit, even though they're all pretty sure the alliance will make a play for Springfield first (which is why the Joes are sending a "sneak and peak" team there).
In Springfield, Dawn sneaks into town to visit her parents (I only know her name due to the dramatis personae from issue #301) and thanks them for suffering some sort of trouble for something she did. She pledges never to hurt them but has a weird look on her face when she does so so I'm not sure she means it.
Back at the Pit, Spirit identifies three Vipers at the perimeter. Lady Jayne (I think) briefs Duke or Hawk that the Vipers are sporting Revanche technology and puts two and two together when it comes to Revanche's visit to Cobra Island. Instead of eliminating them, Duke or Hawk suggests they take advantage of the Viper's reconnaissance to feed them some fake intel.
Meanwhile, an assassination team of enhanced Blue Ninjas arrives to take out Scarlett and Snake-Eyes in the Sierras. Scarlett and Snake-Eyes kill all the Blue Ninjas save one who goes kamikaze on them before dying. Watching from Cobra Island, Khan and his cronies see the dust from the blast settle on the seemingly dead Scarlett and Snake-Eyes. (I'm going to guess the corpses are just Blue Ninjas dressed as them.) Khan is impressed and orders as many units as Alpha-001 can deliver.
Kill Your Darlings #5: Given how much happened in previous issues, this one is pretty sparse, though extremely relevant.
In 1987, Rose's mom discovers she's pregnant. She leaves a message for the child's father, telling him that he ruined her life and her only consolation is that he'll never know the baby. As she's driving herself to the hospital to deliver Rose on a dark and stormy night, she hits a boy. She finds him dying on the side of the road but declines to help him. After delivering Rose, Rose's mother cries as she learns from a television news interview with the boy's grandmother that he died. As a dark hand floats over Rose's crib and flames surround Rose's mother's bed, the grandmother - pretty clearly the Girl Who Wouldn't Burn as an elderly woman, who's raised the boy since his mother mysteriously disappeared ten years earlier - pledges revenge for his death during the interview.
We obviously have a lot going on here. You have to wonder why a ten-year-old boy was wandering a road on a dark and stormy night. It's also suspicious that his mother "disappeared" and that the Girl Who Wouldn't Burn seemingly allowed herself to age. At any rate, this issue provides a more sympathetic portrait of Rose's mother than we got from Evil last issue.
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