A big play, but made with heart.
Creative Staff:
Story: Greg Rucka
Art: Carmen Carnero, Terry Pallot
What They Say:
Still weeks away from pick-up by the Starjammers, Cyclops and Corsair look for help getting off a hostile planet elsewhere. Continuing the trend, would-be rescuers might not be what they seem.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
After spending time working with the mild despair and hopelessness angle in the previous issue, it was good to see Corsair and Scott working together with the same general plan in mind to get off the planet. Fixing the quantum tracker and basically calling out so they’d get hunted down is risky to be sure, but as they say, better to be a prisoner and alive than dead while marooned out in the galaxy. Spending three or so issues focused on the father and son bonding side of things with just them together on this world definitely worked in its favor, but it was also quickly reaching its tipping point. So seeing them come alive with this shot of hope is definitely good to see, and to watch them try and execute their plan even more so.
The team that’s tracking them is fairly interesting overall, as they’ve finally arrived after the tracker when live again. As Corsair notes later, he can definitely appreciate a multispecies team like this compared to the more racially “pure” groups that tend to operate. The man in charge, who is only called Master by the young woman indentured to him, takes an interesting approach to being a bounty hunter as he takes a fasting oath when going after prey, which after six weeks of tracking has him starting to wear down some and his Savva getting more concerned about him. There’s a decent element to this overall as it’s not the norm that we see and it provides a little additional coloring to it all, and a route through which Scott can use when dealing with the Savva to help get them off world – all while learning a little as well.
Since the last couple were largely dialogue based, this one moves through with action more than anything else, but with some fun dialogue as well. Corsair and Scott split their approach in dealing with the bounty hunters and there’s a decent little trap at work to throw things off and a decent play made by Corsair to take down as many of them as he can while Scott steals the ship. It naturally gets twisted up a bit due to Scott’s nature, but even there we see that Corsair will trust his son in that he’s got a plan, but also because he knows he’ll do the right thing. Scott’s certainly not a pirate and wouldn’t ever really make one, but that knowledge helps to make decisions easier about how and why to trust him.
In Summary:
Things do come to a close quickly here, but it’s done in a smooth and relatively fun way to keep it all moving and closes this particular chapter well enough. There’s fun in seeing Scott playing to the sneaky side here and also how he manages to deal with fighting against the Savva, but not giving up on who he is in trying to find a non-violent way to solve things once he knows the truth of it all. The bounty hunter team is decent, but they have the bad luck of just dealing with someone like Corsair, who hasn’t actually been caught by bounty hunters until now and it’s all part of Scott’s plan. The book has a good flow to it and there’s an ease with Scott and Corsair that works and even the bounty hunter crew has a decent enough flow to make you a little more curious about them. Good stuff and definitely a decent way to bring this part of the story to a close.
Grade: B
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: Marvel Comics via ComiXology
Release Date: September 24th, 2014
MSRP: $3.99
