The more she learns, the angrier she gets.
Creative Staff:
Story: Stephanie Phillips
Art: Robert Carey
Colors: Rosh
Letterer: Troy Peteri
What They Say:
Last week, Miriam Roberts was a normal college student. Now, she’s wanted by the FBI in connection with a series of terrorist attacks involving psychically powered Russian sleeper agents. Just when Miriam believes things couldn’t get worse, secrets about her long-lost parents resurface, and she realizes that she might have powers of her own.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
Red Atlantis has thrown a lot of different things at the reader in the first two issues and expands on that nicely here in this third installment. Stephanie Phillips is giving us something that feels very 80s with some amusing 2020 trappings to it while at the same time leaving lots of room to explore things more deeply as each new facet is revealed. Robert Carey continues to be an ideal artist for this series as I like the way he brings the cast to life while handling the various locations, but especially the expressiveness of the characters. He’s definitely capturing Miriam’s feelings on this entire thing really well and that’s definitely key here to keep us engaged with her.
There are a lot of things going on behind the scenes here with how this is unfolding as we see some of those from Russia that are intent on finding Miriam. That it’s her apparent grandmother is no surprise and that there’s more to it than just that as well. But they’ve got connections and are even able to get the two FBI agents off the case because of what they’ve seen and said so far, and that they do know more than they’ve said, which helps to make Miriam easier to catch. The two agents are definitely unhappy about this in general but there’s still a belief that they didn’t see what they saw and are trying to cope with it. I do like that we get to see just how much influence that our mystery lady seems to have here as it makes clear she’s got some real reach.
For Miriam, she’s just struggling with what she was seemingly able to do as we saw the last time around in stopping bullets and the like. Sasha’s doing his best to fill her in on things, but she’s just plain resistant for obvious reasons. When he talks about the safe houses he has and the plan that will take them to South America, she flat out refuses to give up her life, since she hasn’t quite understood what’s going to be coming after her and how she could change the world. But she does realize that the thing that gives her these abilities came from her birth parents and it’s the last thing she really wants, making the whole thing even more complicated now. There’s a lot to like in seeing these two go back and forth at it in the diner and in the car, but also to see that Miriam is reacting harshly to all external stimuli, such as when the local yokel ends up trying to get involved and she nearly kills him.
In Summary:
Red Atlantis continues to feel like an odd kind of throwback to the things I grew up on with sleeper agents and all that jazz so there’s a definitely level of enjoyment to it for me. I like the characters as we’ve seen them so far even though they’re mostly just reacting to events going on. I do wish the whole electoral massacre thing was getting more attention within the story but it was more the catalyst for events than anything else. Miriam’s definitely coming across as a lot more powered up than I initially thought she might be so it’s going to be interesting to see how all of this gets resolved. Phillips definitely keeps the tension up with this issue while Carey delivers more striking and engaging artwork to bring it to life.
Grade: B
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: AfterShock Comics
Release Date: January 13th, 2021
MSRP: $4.99
