The bigger story unfolds.
Creative Staff:
Story: Zac Thompson
Art: Dalibor Talajic
Colors: Jose Villarrubia
Letterer: Charles Pritchett
What They Say:
In the future, the galaxy is united under a monolith known as the Galactic Relay. Although the towering monument is meant to inspire conformity of ideas, technology, and progress, it is not without its enemies, and many have begun to resent the foreign structure. Now, Jad Carter, a Relay employee, has found the Relay’s mythological creator.
Jad is lost in deep space searching for the farmer and the first world. Are the legends of Hank Donaldson merely fiction? Too bad he may never find out. Legions of derelict space pirates and the entirety of the Relay’s forces will stop at nothing to keep Jad from the truth.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
Adding another frustrating title to my experience, Relay is a series that had some interesting if oddly laid out ideas that’s made it hard to connect with. That’s not the frustrating element though. The last issue we had was back in September, which is a very long wait. The series has shifted artists with Dalibor Talajic stepping in for this issue and the next issue has a different artist when it arrives in April. Thankfully, Zac Thompson is still on board with the script but a series like this working with complicated and not exactly clear story elements hitting readers with as big of a gap as this isn’t good. Luckily, this feels like a transitional issue and it’s very stripped down overall so that you can get through it with relatively easy understanding and a setup for the remaining installments.
Jad’s escape has him looking for the first world and with the ship that he’s got he’s getting some verbal pushback at least. His intent is to understand more of what Donaldson was doing and what happened as the official histories are confused, to say the least, and with so many records indicating Zalis as this place he knows where he needs to go. The problem is that this isn’t the first world because it’s the 242nd talked about world so it’s clearly not what he wants it to be. But with him knowing that Donaldson was there, well, it can at least provide some information through his fever dream view of what’s going on. And after dealing with space pirates trying to get his ship for parts and other issues, something more focused and planetside is definitely what he needs as you can see him slowly going crazy with the way all that he once believed is simply not lining up.
The time on Zalis just reinforces all of this as the seemingly only major city there refuses entry since it has a Relay. Landing outside of there and looking for information, he deals with some armed locals that paint a picture of how Donaldson’s mission here isn’t what the official records say and highlights a series of failures that he abandoned. The scraping by survivors on the outside show him how the powerful maintain control over the small population while the rest outside eke out something. His struggle with this reality that goes against what he was taught is rough and the slow spiral from there on out paints a picture of a man very much ready to just end everything if not for the need to know the truth. Luckily, it looks like the next group trying to take over his ship is part of something bigger and are hunting him as we see in the last couple of pages.
In Summary:
After three issues that felt like they were wildly difficult to connect with, it figures that the first new issue in just over five minutes would be the most linear and easiest to engage with. It’s probably the most accessible of the series at this point. I like what Thompson is exploring in how the conquering party rewrites history and pockets of true history still survives but it’s lacking in a certain narrative strength to hold it all together. This one focuses on a more streamlined Jad with a clear focus and that helps a whole lot. Dalibor Talajic does a solid job stepping in on the art duties for this issue and I don’t do comparisons in general, never mind when there’s this much time between issues. It’s a solid presentation of an interesting world and situation as well as some fun time in space so I left mostly satisfied but with that underlying frustration over the whole largely release problem.
Grade: C+
Age Rating: 16+
Released By: AfterShock Comics
Release Date: Februry 20th, 2018
MSRP: $3.99
