THE FORGED #3: Close Encounters Of The WORST Kind

After revealing what they are about to face at the end of the last issue, Rucka and Trautmann have readers rejoin Victory, her team and the Cassandra as they lock down the Acheron facility. The issue moves at an incredibly brisk but rock-steady pace as the team at first faces off against the hungry local vegetation and we again get to see the Forged function as a very tight and ideally in sync unit. Then the real threat appears and Rucka and the Trautmann get to not only show off the skills of the Forged but the skills of the Cassandra as well. Rucka and Trautmann’s treatment of precognition reminds me very much of how Frank Herbert treated it in his Dune series (specifically Dune Messiah). It’s a predictive path that has to be followed to EXACTING detail by all involved in the vision, including the one who has it, or things will fall apart. Fortunately, the Forged are very good at doing something to a T and it’s a good thing too because when the REAL problem shows up, that adherence to precision saves their lives several times. I cannot overstate how smoothly this issue reads with a seamless blend of action, sharp dialogue and parsed out reveals from the entire creative team. We learn what happened with Victory and Cassandra back on the ship (we also get an absolutely superb double-page spread of Victory in her birthday suit, phew) and come face to face with an absolutely horrific alien species that manifest in this dimension in a highly grotesque manner.

Still through all this action and revelation the thread of why this is all happening isn’t lost. Humanity’s penchant for destructive, take-the-easy-way-out solutions swings into full view with a revelation involving the illicit use of T-Space technology that displays how we are sometimes our worst enemy. Yes, the aliens are horrific, violent and dead set on our destruction… but can you blame them? I’ll leave that for you to decide. This issue finishes up with an exciting narrow escape that closes the door on the opening act and opens the door to the next chapter in the series. September can’t come soon enough!

Henderson, Woodard, and Maher are once again on the song. There’s plenty of adrenaline fueled action, explosions and alien nastiness to thrill the most hardcore sci-fi action fan. Henderson plays effortlessly with scale here. The opening pages remind me very much of ALIENS where the Marines are locking down the facility from the ops center. From there Henderson jumps between tight dialogue close ups and huge pull backs to reveal the scale of things to give you the bigger picture. The movement alternates between Victory and her team and the Cassandra as she threads them through what for anyone else would be an absolutely impossible situation. Henderson draws some pretty gross and terrifying aliens too while Woodard uses reds and browns to make them even more menacing.

Cassandra is a psychedelic butterfly leading the Forged through a deadly garden of destruction. Speaking of color, Woodard’s contrasting use of psychedelic, iridescent colors for Cassandra to give a physical manifestation of her difference from the more grounded tones of the Forged themselves emphasizes her alien or otherworldly aspect and interestingly shows a commonality with the invading aliens who attack by jumping between the dimension and T-Space. Woodard has an absolute ball with color here and Maher gets to make some of the coolest sound effects as the action just builds in scale and crescendo till the last pages.

It’s a lesson in flawless execution that makes the 57 odd pages of comic just rush by you at a blistering, irresistible pace that will leave you breathless by it’s end.