Ship of Crawling Death

I always liked Boomer--one of the supporting characters from the original Battlestar Galactica. He was in most episodes and probably followed only Starbuck and Apollo as the best fighter pilot in the fleet. It was probably Herbert Jefferson Jr's performance that made Boomer a likable and fondly remembered member of Galactica's crew, giving the pilot a aura of competence, courage and dependability.

So an issue of the Marvel Comics adaptation that gives Boomer center stage is something to welcome. Battlestar Galactica #15 (May 1980) did just this.

As was often the case, Walt Simonson and Roger Mckenzie came up with the plot, with McKenzie writing the script and Simonson doing the breakdowns. Klaus Janson did the finished art. Together, the three men created what is an effective and downright terrifying little horror story.

It begins with Boomer, his usual wingman Jolly and nurse Cassiopeia in a shuttle, with Apollo flying escort, checking out a derelict spaceship. They had picked up a faint distress single from the craft and there was always hope of finding fuel and food--both of which the human fleet are chronically short on.

But the mission gets scary fast. The ship turns out to be an old battle cruiser. When the humans approach, the ship's guns open fire on them, but then stop as soon as Apollo tries to get radio contract. But then the ship goes silent.

Boomer suits up, flies over and blows his way in through an airlock. But inside, he's attacked by a swarm of monsters. Liberal use of his laser and a few concussion grenades keep him alive.









Moving farther into the ship, Boomer finds a room full of human corpses. One woman, the ship's commander, is still alive, greeting the pilot with an encouraging "Get off this ship of death!"

She lives long enough to tell a pretty tragic tale. After the Cylons had destroyed the colonies, the Galactica gathered up whatever survivors could be found, forming the ragtag fleet that has been fleeing the Cylons ever since. But, inevitably, they had missed a few survivors.

These people managed to scavenge up a ship of their own, then set out to find the fleet. By the Cylons had left behind one last, brutal trap, seeding the colony planets with deadly germs. This had the effect of killing the crew and mutating vermin aboard the ship into the monsters that Boomer had encountered earlier. The crew had been dying one by one.

But we are not done with the tragedy yet. The woman turns out to be Commander Adama's wife, who had been presumed dead after the initial Cylon attack. Boomer is able to tell her that Adama is alive. He does tell her a fib when the conversation gets to her children. He opts not to tell her that her youngest son Zac had been killed.

She dies. Boomer sets the ship to self-destruct and fights his way back out. Then he tells another fib--informing Adama and Apollo that there had been no survivors.

This is a really strong story. The emotions are real and we are given some relief from the emotional downs of the story in two ways: First, Boomer's determination to live while fighting his way through the monsters is noteworthy. Second, Adama's wife is given a hope spot before dying by learning her family is still alive.

The Simonson/Janson artwork complements the story perfectly.

So this issue works as an exciting action-adventure tale, a horror story, and an effective character piece.

But it's another tragic story in a long line of tragic stories I've been reviewing recently, isn't it? Over the past month, we've visited several times with the Hulk to see him cheated of a happy ending on several occasions, then watched Jonah Hex get murdered, stuffed and placed on display. I didn't plan that, but we need to move on to something more upbeat.

So next week, we'll look at a team-up between Batman and the pulp character that inspired him--the Shadow. That should be fun and upbeat. A super-violent vigilante.... um... working with a character famous for his... er.. incredibly tragic backstory. So, yeah. ... fun.

Gee whiz.

Cylons, Vipers, and Booby-Traps

I was overseas when much of  Battlestar Galactica aired, so I missed most episodes during its original run. Perhaps because of that, I didn't usually read the Marvel comic book based on the show. 

With art by Walt Simonson through much of its run, Marvel's Battlestar Galactica has a good reputation for doing solid, entertaining Space Opera. I do remember purchasing and reading one issue of it and my memory of that story was a pleasant one. This was BG #16 (June 1980) and I recently scored a copy off Ebay. Revisiting the story, I once again reaffirmed that I had impeccable taste for good storytelling even at a young age. 

"Berserker" was written by Roger McKenzie, who co-plotted the tale with Simonson and possibly Bob Layton. It picks up with Galactica and the fleet having gotten away from the Cylons, but they are now running critically low on fuel.

There's a highly volcanic planet nearby, which Commander Adama hopes will have the fuel they need. But there's also a Cylon early warning satellite in orbit around it. The Galactica sends out jamming signals to keep the satellite from sending out an alarm, but this has the side effect of messing up their own communications. So when a flight of Vipers (the Galactica's fighter craft) disappear after flying off to check out another space craft, no one at first notices.

To make matters worse, the satellite is linked to the planet's core, so if they deactivate it, the planet blows up, which would in itself give them away to the Cylons. So a team of techs has to deactivate this booby-trap before deactivating the satellite. This means first deactivating a number of anti-personnel booby-traps BEFORE deactivating the planet destroying booby trap BEFORE deactivating the satellite itself.

Simonson's art is noteworthy in helping to tell the story clearly and give us exciting action. I'm particularly impressed, though, with McKenzie's script. We need quite a lot of information dumped on us to understand the story, but this is done concisely and logically. We're told everything we need to know, but in dialogue that has a natural rhythm to it and without ever slowing down the fast-paced story.

The scenes with the tech crew working on the satellite are nicely meshed together with the bulk of the story, in which a Cylon ship of a design never seen before mercilessly rips into the Galactica's Vipers. A flight of three Vipers is quickly destroyed. Captain Apollo leads another flight of three into batttle against it.

Apollo's two wingmen are downed. Apollo himself tries the "reverse thrust" trick that worked countless times on the TV show, but the Cylon pilot second-guesses him. With his Viper damaged and heading for a crash-landing on the surface of the planet, Apollo turns the fighter craft duel into a test of laser pistol marksmanship. He drains his pistol dry with that one shot, but it works. He and the Cylon both crash-land.

The Cylon pilot is itself (himself?) a new design, who conveniently explains that he's one of seven prototypes for a advanced warrior. The design was actually too successful, so the Cylon leadership exiled them to seven different remote locations. The super-Cylon is now delighted to finally have the chance to kill stuff.

Apollo, though, out-thinks the Cylon one more time, using the wiring from his otherwise-useless pistol to knock the robot into a pool of lava. In the meantime,the satellite is deactivated and the planet turns out to have the fuel needed by the fleet.

The super-Cylons were meant to return. Or at least this one was--the story ends with a reveal that Apollo's opponent survived its lava bath. He really would have made an effective re-occurring villain. But a search of the Marvel wiki doesn't reveal any other appearances during the series' remaining seven issues. So the super-Cylons are still out there somewhere, waiting.... waiting...

"Berserker" is indeed solid, entertaining Space Opera, taking the intriguing premise of the TV series and using the essentially unlimited special effects budget inherent in Walt Simonson's art work and McKenzie's tight, expertly constructed script to tell a truly exciting tale. 

Next week, we'll return to Earth and learn what happens when SHIELD needs a new agent and decides to recruit... Foggy Nelson?