So what happened last time? The artists got to draw the characters correctly for 3 or 4 pages before adopting older “extreme” versions. The only ship people could have fun on (except for kids, was Boxey the only child survivor or sometime, or is my memory that off?) gets unceremoniously blown to bits, Baltar is dressing like Cable when he’s visited by a bald Count Iblis, Adama was sick last we saw him, and the layouts seem more interested in showing off the art than enhancing the story.

Oh, and Boxey is about to get eaten by a T-Rex. Let’s check out issue #2.

Help, he wants to eat me!

Battlestar Galactica #2

Maximum Press (August 1995)

This is the cover I used for the “Liefield’s Galactica” logo, drawn by Liefeld. The Cylon is totally in your face, the way Liefield and his Image pals like it.

Yes, the guy who helped design the new character is also responsible for the layouts, thus fueling my “showing off” theory and including showing off the designs along with showing off the artwork. I still maintain that they’re waisting space here. The comic opens up with the T-Rex about to attack Boxey. Two panels on one page, with Boxey’s reaction in a large inset. Still not the biggest crime this comic produces in layouts.

It takes a two-page layout of four panels to show Starbuck and Boomer using the Vipers 2.0 to attack the T-Rex, which is about to land on Boxey. Next panel “centons later” and the dino appears to have disappeared. Did they vaporize it?

In a page with a normal layout, Starbuck catches Apollo up with what happened, which would be fine for the audience had we not already gotten a “what happened last time” in the inside front cover. Apollo worries that this has all been for nothing. Switch to Cylon Base Ship Hades, as Iblis recalls his episode appearance and then reveals his true form.

Nope.

Sadly, yes, like an anorexic Sabertooth. Also, as you can see, Liefeld and Napton decided to go ahead and just have Iblis declare the theory that Iblis and the Imperious Leader have a connection. Here’s the story behind that. Patrick Macnee (who also narrates the intro) provided the voice of the Cylon Imperious Leader, the machine in charge of the Cylons. He also played Count Iblis, and there is a scene where Iblis is talking to Baltar and Baltar recognizes the voice. Iblis plays it off, but in a way that suggests he may not be telling the truth.

What could have been a great revelation down the road is thrown away in one moment of exposition. Then again, I don’t recall Iblis and the Beings of Light showing up in the other mini-series, although it’s been a long time since I read them. It still seems like waisted potential. Anyway, the Seraphs start poking around the Hades and Iblis demonstrates his new power by blowing them up. This is the last bit of action we’ll see for a while.

In between those two paragraphs, Tigh (now president of the Council of Twelve, the ruling body of the fleet) believes the pyramid (the technology Starbuck’s team found last issue) may have a clue as to the fate of the Thirteenth Colony and decides to execute Adama’s final order. Apollo is opposed to it, but agrees to the Council’s decision. Boxey (featuring a shadow-covered Muffit) is disappointed in his actions back on Earth, and Sheba decides that now that Boxey and Cain (her son with Apollo) are grown she’d like to reenlist with the Warriors.

And then it happens. The biggest since in space usage in this comic. If you watch Atop The Fourth Wall (BW readers have heard me refer to it often enough), you know that what really ticks Linkara off is when they do a two page spread designed so that you have to turn the comic sideways, like you’re looking at a Playboy centerfold. While I fully agree that this could easily be one page holding the comic the proper way, there is worse. I give you…

THREE PANELS IN TWO PAGES!

And they’re not even action panels, like when Starbuck and Boomer attacked the T-Rex. If virtual mentor Jerzy Drozd (or any other comic book artist) is reading this, please give your reaction in the comments section, but I’ll give you mine. This is the worst use of panel space I have ever seen in a comic book. It’s two panels of a doctor working some machine and a sliver of Apollo’s reaction. That’s it. It doesn’t need to be two pages!

Doing something like this should only be done for a moment so dynamic that it takes a huge “picture” to show it, like when Superman and Doomsday fought to the death, and even that only needed one strike per page. Giving us a two page, three panel shot of some guy working a cryogenic machine does not become more interesting because you use a dynamic shot. The moment defines the panels not the other way around. I hearby declare this shot a failure of sequential storytelling! So much waisted space that could have been used for more story.

So what is the order? That Adama be brought out of cryo-statis if they found any clue to the 13th Tribe, which Doctor Cyrus (an expert in ancient lore) is convinced the pyramid is. Note that Adama is still as close to Lorne Green as legally allowed. This is why Adama acquired a deadly disease in the beginning of the previous issue, so that he could still be around (because he’d be reeeeeaaaaaallllly old otherwise) via cryo-statis to take part in this story. And that’s how issue #2 ends.

Why did they have to push this story so far ahead in the future? I have no idea, unless they wanted to age Boxey, introduce their new Viper designs quickly in the story, and make everybody old, possibly how old they would be had the original series continued. Otherwise, what was the point? The new Viper could easily be a prototype they ended up producing in the next few mini-series, but hyper-compressed storytelling was the way the 1990’s did things, while padding things out with poor panel usage and larger images than most picture books for elementary school kids.

So that’s issue #2. It includes a synopsis of Iblis’ episode, “War of the Gods” and a Battlestar Galactica lexicon. There are still two issues more to go. Lords of Kobol give me strength.

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