Confronting the truth!
Creative Staff:
Story: Steve Horton
Art: Stephen Thompson
Colors: Lisa Jackson
Letters: Neil Uyetake
What They Say:
In the wake of last issue’s shocking death, Lilly and her team of aliens must infiltrate the enemy ship with one goal in mind: find Eva!
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
The arrival of the fourth issue of Satellite Falling was something that caught me by surprise, but the welcome kind. With the third issue out back in summer 2016, it’s a bit of a tough thing to get back into the flow of things with a series like this but it manages to click and come back together pretty well. Steve Horton had put together some fun books with what we got before and a lot of it really did stick even with all that I read and watch so that after a couple of pages I was back into the groove completely. It also didn’t hurt to get more of Thompson’s artwork with the story shifting gears and working a pretty solid action approach.
Lilly put together a solid team the last time around and grabbed the right kind of ship to go after Eva with, as something that can be cloaked was a requirement. It was a fun time seeing the team she put together and their personalities and abilities, which leads to the payoff here as they put the plan into motion. The arrival on the station where Eva is does work in a kind of loose and simple way, but it’s got a kind of Mission: Impossible feeling about it as they sneak in before it all goes crazy with guns a blazing. We’re not really going to know anyone on this station outside of Eva so it’s easy to just ignore the bodies that are piling up quickly. The plan is one with a bit of a quirk or two as you’d expect coming from Lilly as she’s ensuring that it’ll all work, but that means keeping some things hidden, even from Credish.
Where the book expands its scale is in the confrontation between Lilly and Eva, with Lilly doing her best to come in peace without a weapon – bit with a plan. This allows Eva to feel like she has the upper hand and that brings us the villain monologue, but it’s a fun one as we see that Eva was just an elaborate futuristic catfish to deal with alien sympathizers. Earthgov clearly has an intense dislike of aliens that dirty up the universe and Lilly is a rare type that took her sympathies so far as to leave Earth. But we’re also now seeing that Earth through Eva is getting ready to purify the galaxy. It’s disheartening to see the entire world essentially become as xenophobic as this and you really want to explore that more. But in the here and now, it makes for a tense situation to be defused, which should be fun to watch unfold.
In Summary:
I enjoyed the first three issues of Satellite Falling a lot when they came out last year and getting back into it now took a bit to really and fully reconnect with it. The book does draw it all back together and even without reading those issues you could still have a lot of fun as it’s basically a well-executed caper issue. Horton’s clearly having fun with this and the distinctive characters while Thompson captures the look of this world and its inhabitants in a great way. There’s a lot to like here, though I do recommend re-reading the first three issues again to get totally back in the zone before digging into this one.
Grade: B+
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: IDW Publishing
Release Date: April 26th, 2016
MSRP: $3.99
