When we left our heroes last, the Clarke was under attack from some alien vessels - but is it their intention to destroy them? Meanwhile back on Earth, President Blades’ plan to end the Middle East wars in 90 days takes a massive setback.
Letter 44 has been a near-flawless series full of top quality issues that’s never let me down and #10 is just such an issue.
Charles Soule brings the action in a big way with the first space battle but rather than descend into corny pew-pew fighting, there’s an intelligence behind what happens and how things play out. This ain’t no Roland Emmerich brand of storytelling, there’s some brains writing this tale!
I love that artist Alberto Alburquerque’s designs of the alien vessels have this organic quality to them. When one of their fleet is destroyed, the reaction of one of the ship’s is to almost quake with rage as if it has emotions! Later on, we see it has octopus-like arms, reinforcing the biological angle of their tech. Or maybe it’s not tech and that is the aliens, or a kind of alien? Either way, these are fantastically original and creative choices from our storytellers.
Back on Earth in Afghanistan, an Afghan shepherd manages to smuggle a nuke into the base perimeter of Blades’ Brigades, the troops equipped with the special anti-alien tech. I don’t know squat about the military in real life but it seems to me with all the checkpoints and whatnot we have in civilian life at places like airports and municipal buildings, that a search of the shepherd’s giant bulging bags strapped onto his donkey would seem prudent as they were headed to a massive, top secret military base. Except none of the soldiers think to do that. Is that a realistic detail? I don’t know but something about that situation didn’t ring quite right to me.
Still, a massive blow to Blades and the US as they lose 11,000 troops, billions of dollars’ worth of tech, not to mention the potential protection of Earth should an alien invasion occur.
Letter 44 #10 is a terrifically exciting issue in what is easily Charles Soule’s best current title, and that’s saying something given the guy’s writing about 6 or 7 monthly comics right now! Definitely the best comic of the week, check out this series if you haven’t already - it is amazing!
Letter 44 #10
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