The Good: The Alex Ross cover; character dialogue improves.
The Bad: Some weak dialogue and scenes with outside characters.
The story: When we last left Issue 6, the citizens of Central City had been brainwashed into battling for Spectra. Complicating issues is the automated defense system, an artificial intelligence with all the properties of a malicious living entity and a very powerful weapon at its disposal. While both General Tomak and Chief Anderson attempt to deal with it at its creators' level, G-Force is forced to meet "Thor," and its weapon, "Mjolnir," head-on.
The characters: G-Force runs more true to character than we've seen in previous issues. Jason almost has the right balance of snide vs. conservative when dealing with Mark, but when an explosion leaves him alone with Princess to fulfill their mission, he is spot-on.
I have more of a problem with the portrayal of Zoltar, who masquerades as a scientist that Chief Anderson must consult in order to get information on Thor. In traditional "Battle" fashion. Zoltar discards his disguise before a horrified Anderson, but then he takes it several steps further: in a two-page splash that looks more awkward than dynamic or threatening, he holds Anderson by the throat. A few panels later, Anderson is in a hospital trauma unit, suffering multiple contusions, broken ribs and the name of a scientist carved into his chest. In the light of the series, I found the "psychotic killer" approach too lowbrow for Zoltar--too nasty even for the Gatchaman version, Berg Katse. Katse is ruthless, but he would rather shoot his nemesis than go about the messy and extremely personal business of slicing letters into bare flesh. My immediate thought upon first reading the scene was, "Why didn't Zoltar just kill Anderson?" It seems a lot more feasible than to waste all that energy beating Anderson half to death and not even torturing any information out of him.
As I've mentioned before, I want to like this title, but a few things rub me the wrong way. Some plot switches (one involving Tomak reading minds) are a little too convenient for me to believe they've been planned for a long time. I could be biased, though, after watching the writer of this title publicly hang himself via the BotP Mailing List on Yahoo. Munier Sharrieff clearly shows he has little regard for the series or its fans, and bad behavior on a creator's part reflects badly on his or her work.
The art: The usual high standards apply, though I found the aforementioned Zoltar scene to be a waste of an extra page and the positioning awkward. There was also a glitch in the coloring in a scene that showed Jason being swept off the top of the Phoenix when it should have been Mark. Other than that, I suspect Tortosa has been watching his BotP tapes--the backwoods farmer who encounters General Tomak after the General teleports to safety is the spitting image of a fisherman character featured in the TV episode, "Siege of the Squids."
The cover Alex Ross features Jason in this issue. This is a neat cover, though I wish we'd gotten a better look at his face.
The bottom line: Mixed feelings on this one. Some typos and technical errors mar the book, and Zoltar doesn't quite ring true. Still, the ending may be worthwhile.
SPECIAL NOTE: It has been announced that due to sagging sales, the BotP comic series will end at issue #12. However, a new G-Force comic series will be released in September of 2004.
