Black Terror #8 - Dynamite Entertainment

This issue, the Black Terror finally makes it into the inner sanctum of area 51. The place where they're keeping the original American Crusader, Archie Masters. The government wanted him to be their own personal 'Super-hero'.
However, when Archie showed them that he wouldn't be their mindless enforcer, they hooked him up with a power dampener, and came in every few months or so to bleed off enough of his energy to create another batch of the mindless clones . . the things that were presented to the world as the American Crusader. 'Each one of their soldiers holds a tiny sliver of my essence. Like quantum ghosts. The first few carried my sense of right and wrong, but with each successive copy my identity was washed out of them. You see . . I can't live with them, or without them. They were like marionettes run so far from the puppeteer their strings had gone slack, out of my control . . but I could still feel their movements back along the strings. Oh, god. All the things they've made me do.' Archie had asked Bob to come and put him out of his misery. Bob had fought through clones, the government, Dynamic Man, soldiers and alien things that he couldn't even describe . . all to get to the side of his best friend. But when he enters the room, he finds that the last line of defense is his guard . . Colonel Marcus Chamberlain. At first he takes Bob's entrance as a threat to one of the men he most looks up to. But Archie eventually becomes the voice of reason and explains the situation . . to both of them. It turns out that Marcus is actually Clarence Chamberlain's grandson. He was a soldier that these 2 heroes had saved during WWII. So while Marcus thought that he was guarding Archie . . protecting him, it turns out that he was actually his jailer. So . . the plan now is to allow all the clones that are descending onto their location into the room. The closer they all are, the easier it will be for Archie to reabsorb their 'quantum ghosts' when he releases his energy. He'd asked Bob to do this because he thought he would be the only one able to withstand the energy of the blast. As it turns out . . I think in an attempt to save his friend, Archie manipulates his power to save Marcus also. Archie had reabsorbed all the energy, but then he and it became merged with Marcus. Marcus Chamberlain is the new American Crusader. The one and only. At least for now. This issue wraps up this part of the story. For the time being. Alex Ross and Phil Hester wrote it, with Jonathan Lau doing the art. I thought it was a good issue. It was a good explanation . . a natural course of events. And even though Bob appears to have lost his friend . . the world has not lost it's hero. And Bob . . Bob can make new friends . . including Marcus.