Wrtier – Cary Bates
Artist – Carmine Infantino
Inker – Tony DeZuniga
Colours – Michelle Wolfman
Letters – Carrie Spiegle

Mike Donovan and fellow resistance fighter Willie have snuck aboard Diana’s mothership in order to put a stop to both her and Dr. Meagan, the former who wants to send the latter back to Earth as a brainwashed spy while the latter wants to blow kill Diana and every living thing aboard with a micro-nuclear device. Back on Earth, Julie worries over those who have gone into space and if they will be able to stop Earl from detonating his device while Bates finds his son at Camp Lakka. Charles and Lydia plot against Diana as this all goes on, the two of them tired of her ineptness and going so far as aiding Willie and Mike, posing as a Fifth Column member to bring Diana down. Cary Bates and the returning Carmine Infantino do a great job with the book, the suspense palpable as multiple stories move along at a steady, tension-filled pace. They cut back to Earth where Ham and Chris continue their plans to bring down Lakka and the atrocities that go on there in the form of experiments on helpless men and women, tests that transform and fatten the bodies of the victims so that they might feed the snakes who have come to Earth with nothing but ill intentions. Bates makes this even more satisfying as the men of the Resistance make the Visitor scientists inject themselves with their poisons instead of outright killing them. Perhaps it makes them no better than the monsters who have taken so many lives at this death camp but it is a deserved bit of justice and reads far more dramatically than if they had simply caught a bullet to the head. Infantino and Bates then bring it back to the mothership where Earl Meagan has been rescued and taken off the ship but he soon comes to and warns them that the nuclear device has already been triggered, there is just some sort of short that has prevented it from going off at the moment and they would be wise to let him head back to where Diana resides. As it is, as Diana’s fighters converge on the ship, the rest of the men having taken off leaving Dr. Meagan alone, the bomb goes off at the perfect time, maybe not for Earl but for the Resistance and the world who now see him as a martyr. All in all, a superb issue that keeps the reader on the edge of their seats with each turn of the page and a book that leaves one wanting more.

4.5 out of 5