Creative Staff:
Story: Joe Casey
Art: Nathan Fox, Jim Mahgood, Farel Dalrymple
What They Say:
The hunt for Captain Victory continues – and the search for inner meaning is not far behind! The command crew of the Dreadnaught Tiger embarks on cosmic mercy missions to track down both the heart and soul of their lost captain!
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
In a lot of ways, I can’t remember the last time I struggled with a book so much, especially one that started off with me raving about it. The second installment had me trying to wrap my head around what was going on as the locales expanded and the characters grew in number, but a couple of re-reads in trying to put it all into context helped to make it more enjoyable overall. The third installment is proving to be of a similar nature, though I found less to really engage me this time around with what’s going on. With several stories told across different worlds with a couple of incarnations of the title character, one we haven’t really gotten to know well in any incarnation, it’s not easy to get into things just yet.
The Earth based story with the teenager aged Victory is one that has its moments as we see that he’s grown up and adjusted to things a bit and has taken on the name Victor, which in itself is amusing. He’s having a hard time adjusting to what he is, though it’s fun to see that the guy that he’s been spending his time with, which looks an awful lot like Klavus from the main ship crew, he gets the reveal that he’s actually an alien and that he knows where part of his arrival materials have ended up. While Victor was carted off before the men in suits could grab him, what he came with has been under examination. With this taking place in the late 70’s, there’s some smart Star Wars references among the scientists that works well and helps to place the book a little better, while also showing what they’re discovering just by examining things. It’s intriguing with where it can potentially go and what it can alter for the history here.
The space bound side of things has its own interesting things going on as well, though it’s a little messier as it’s working more with some of the Galactic Rangers we haven’t really been exposed to. With an idea of where the Victory clones have gotten off to, Klavus sends some hunting missions to go and find out what’s going on. Since it’s not a pinpointed operation, that leaves things open as more a search and rescue. The Rangers we see are certainly different but familiar, but what worked for me was seeing the first place they deal with that had a much older dead carcass of a Victory clone from some time ago that a religion has sprung up around. The book moves through a lot of things with this and it moves at a frenetic pace, which is good and bad since there’s so much artwork and detail with this new environs that you want to slow down and really savor it. but at the same time, you keep reading further to try and figure out some of what’s going on and that distracts you from things.
In Summary:
The more I read this series, the more I find myself unsure of it. But the more I reread of it, and tying it back to the previous issues, the larger the scale of things are. It just feels like we didn’t get enough of a foundation to build on in really getting into this world and that’s made it such a haphazard experience. I can imagine reading one issue and just never thinking about it again. But the more you reread, the more you pull it all together, the more you want to see. It’s an odd experience in a way and one that can very easily frustrate. I’m left wanting to rave about the book but also realizing that it’s a hell of a hard book to really recommend without having a lot of it on hand to try and really sell it with. It’s really engaging if you can put the effort and time into it though.
Grade: B
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: Dynamite Entertainment
Release Date: October 22nd, 2014
MSRP: $3.99