Meanwhile, over in the fill-ins, Soldier X has the second half of "Rebels, Freaks & Prophets."

And it's a bit of an anticlimax.

Part one was considerably better than expected, for several reasons.  It had some great art from Arthur Ranson.  It made reasonably effective use of the American fear of domestic terrorism.  And it hinted at interesting hidden depths in the villain's motivations.

Unfortunately it doesn't live up to that promise.  As expected, Jonas Keller has a hidden agenda.  But it's not a very good one.  The high concept is that Keller is a precognitive.  He's known for years that he's going to fight Nathan at this point, and he can't see past it.  So, after establishing that he can't get away from this path, he's been going ahead with his visions in order to see what happens.

So, alright, it's a free will versus predestination routine.  In theory that's an interesting subject.  The problem is that this particular answer to the question - "predestination wins" - doesn't make for good drama.  It leaves Keller without coherent motivations, simply acting as a slave to arbitrary premonitions inflicted on him by the writer.  Of course, that's the point - but unmotivated antagonists are bad for drama.  Drastic deviations from the structural norm are required to carry off that sort of character, and this issue doesn't manage it.  Unfortunately, the nature of these characters is that if they don't work, they tend to take the entire story down with them.

The other problem is that it means the story was doing a bait and switch routine with the domestic terrorism sequences in the previous issue.  Bait and switch can work as long as what you eventually give the audience still makes sense, and is more interesting than what you originally promised.  Keller's theme, as eventually explained, has nothing to do with terrorism.  And something tells me that in the current climate, the average reader is more interested in terrorism than in undergraduate philosophy.

It's a nice try, and at least it's got ambition - not to mention Arthur Ranson on art, which is always a good thing.  But it doesn't work.

Rating: C

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