Black Terror #5 - Dynamite Entertainment

So far, in this series, the Black Terror seems like the easiest character to identify with. Well . . maybe that's not exactly what I mean. Actually, I just think he's the easiest character to follow because we've seen the most about him . . he's been in more solo stories. Anyways, I don't know if it's because of these secondary mutations that these heroes are going through, or . . maybe he just is a conspiracy nut. But, it seems like the longer he's been out of the urn, the more isolated from his compatriots that he becomes. He's worried about the state of the world, or more specifically our own government. He seems more concerned about friends becoming enemies . . patriots into rebels . . true believers into terrorists . . citizens into enemy of the state . . soldiers into traitor or heroes into villain. I'm no expert, but . . it all sounds a bit paranoid to me. He's thinking about how the government has co-oped some of these heroes, specifically his friend Archie, the American Crusader, by cloning them and turning them into puppets of the state. We get a flashback to 1944 when he and Archie were in the war together. I think he's dug it up to fuel his anger when fighting the soulless copies of his late friend. He wasn't in the urn, so he's got to be pushing 80 now. However, after he's followed this trail he ends up in the National Archives. There he finds a purer version of Archie's reflection. And he claims to be him. If he's not, he sure knows an awful lot . . like the way Bob fights, the moves he taught him, and that he encoded a copy of the formula that gave him his powers into a letter to President Truman. Which it seems is really what they want . . Bob's formula, his blood. Probably to make copies of him also. And if this really is Archie, he appears to be behind the whole thing. I thought this story gave us an interesting twist. I don't know if I like the whole paranoid super-hero thing. That doesn't seem like a good combination. But, so far . . the Black Terror seems pretty justified in all the assumptions that he's making. People are mad at him, but nobody has proven him wrong . . yet. Alex Ross and Phil Hester write this series, with Jonathan Lau on the art. As with the rest of the books in this 'project', Jonathan's art seems to be improving drastically as the story progress'. There were some fantastic looking pages in this book. Especially the war scenes. I'm not sure how I'll continue with this project, there's just to much stuff to follow it all. But, I guess I'll just have to sort that out as I go along. If you're interested at all in this story-line, my suggestion would be to look for the TPB. You'll get more focused in one volume, and you won't have to jump around so much. This is a decent story, and there are a whole lot of characters with potential here. We've gotten, probably close to 50 books in this 'project' so far . . between the main series and the minis, but . . I think we've barely scratched the surface. Now I know why Alex and Jim Krueger took it on. It would be daunting for anyone else.