One week down in 2023, and the world hasn't ended yet. To kick off another week, we're looking at a mini-series just past the halfway mark, and an ongoing series a couple of issues into it's next storyarc.
The merry band begins to fall apart. Finding the fellow they brought to Griffin for medical treatment last issue is now dead, Dooley and Mr. Manor suspect Griffin. Dirck offers a very lukewarm defense of his long-time traveling companion. So after pointing out a pair of punctures on the neck, Griffin grabs his captured creature and marches out of town.
Dooley, hoping Rosa will be able to offer a direction to seek the true killer in, is rebuffed when she insists she needs some sleep, because it's almost daytime, and she's meeting with Mr. Moreau this evening to discuss building her an opera house. They have a blow up and Dooley storms off. Also, Rosa mentions that if she'd fed on the man they brought in, she'd look much more rosy cheeked, which sort of blows my observation that she looks pinker, more human, when she's weakened, right the hell out of the water.
Out in the desert, Griffin realizes carrying around a big cage with a monster in it is a losing prospect and sets it free, before falling down a hillside and finding Moreau butchering animals in a train car. There's one page in that sequence that looks very rushed, where Terry's lines are smudged and thicker than normal. Meanwhile, Dirck, Dooley and Mr. Manor go roaming the wilderness, and get their asses kicked by a bunch of Moreau's experiments. Also, the useless sheriff is having flashbacks to some earlier point in time, when he wore a weird a hood.
Kind of seems like this bunch can't stand still. Moreau makes a comment about making better predators, and maybe that's what all of them are. Rosa certainly, and Griffin. Maybe less so for Dirck and Dooley, but as they're tied to the other two, they get sucked into it. The nature of their lives won't let them stay within a small confine. If they try, their appetites or requirements for survival make them turn on each other.
Or it's the push-and-pull between chasing one's interests, but being alone, or staying with those they're fond of, but giving up on their passions.
Rock and Easy Co follow the doc. They can't pass through a checkpoint normally, so they take it over, it loudly. Somehow the doctor fails to notice the fire and gunshots, but does notice the truck following him. So the truck comes under fire from a pillbox, and while most of the guys deal with that, Rock and the sniper, Four Eyes, grab a motorcycle and get back after the doc. This brings them to a warehouse in the middle of nowhere, guarded by a bunch of the re-gen soldiers. Must be something important inside, or someone.
Campbell throws in a few funny moments. Rock crashes through a barricade with a big "HALT" sign, and when Four Eyes questions him on it, replies, 'I can't read German.' At the checkpoint, one of his guys is translating the guard's orders, and when he demands papers, Rock rips a bunch of pages out of the truck's instruction manual and hands them over. Risso gets a silent panel of the Nazi just staring dumbfounded, before he starts screaming for the truck to be searched.
This issue does feel thin, though. The place where it ends feels like a decent stopping point for a chapter, but I'm wondering how much will happen in issue 5 and whether these two could have been squeezed together. The dialogue is pretty sparse, which gives Risso and Rossi room to work. There are a lot of nice details. Rock leaning slightly to his left to see around the bullet hole in the windshield.
There's two rows of three panels each where Rock stops their pursuers by rupturing a fuel tank. The top three are the set-up, him gradually getting the bazooka ready. The bottom three are focused on the lead pursuer, and start by showing the light of the shell being fired, then show its path reflected in the guys goggles. It's only in the final panel where the reflection of the tank appears, showing Rock wasn't just firing at the guys chasing them.
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