I picked this up in a collection from my LCS. Chaykin certainly has a spleen to vent. He's taking the country to task for being divided, but his editorial rants at the end reveal him to be as divisive as anyone he's criticizing.



Issue #1: Following the assassination of the US President and most of the cabinet, the government is in disarray, and one of the lesser cabinet members is now in charge, just like on the TV show Designated Survivor and, before that, the Battlestar Galactica reboot. Philandering counterterrorist agent Frank Villa fails to prevent a combined nuclear/bioweapon from going off in Manhattan at the end of the issue. Also, we meet four criminals and learn what they are doing that got them arrested, just like the set-up of The Usual Suspects. Chaykin's editorial at the end is a screed against Trump's then-recent election, which he deems a worse disaster than the nuclear assault depicted in this issue.



Issue #2: Following the nuclear/bio attack last issue, the US Economy has collapsed further, and for some reason everybody blames Frank Villa rather than the terrorists. The four criminals have been placed inside a for-profit private prison just like the one in Orange Is the New Black, and each is involved in an altercation that kills an inmate or guard. (The guards at this prison, unlike real prisons, carry firearms onto the prison floor, which is just nuts.) Villa recruits these four prisoners for an unspecified mission, Dirty Dozen style. There's also a rant in the captions that what Americans hate about New York City is its inclusiveness. Uh....
yeah. That must be it.



Issue #3: Villa interviews his four team members; they begin fighting among themselves, and Chrissy the transexual on the team begins her seduction of Villa. Meanwhile, a cartel of four shadowy groups from across the political spectrum are revealed to have made common cause; they are the culprits of the Manhattan bombing, and their companies are profiting from the cleanup and security crackdown. This element was prominent in the nuclear holocaust TV show Jericho. Chaykin's editorial at the end contains a rant against leftist groups that found issue #1 to be offensive in its portrayal of Islam and transexualism. The political right is actually starting to look a little less odious to him under this barrage from "his side." So much for inclusive New Yorkers! He takes liberal artists to task for religiously insensitive works like “Piss Christ” and the painting of the Virgin Mary made of elephant dung.



Issue #4: The cover depicting a flying eagle menaced by drones was intended for the final issue (#6) but was bumped to here when the original #4 cover, which depicted a lynched Pakistani man with mutilated genitals, was withdrawn after an outcry. Anyway, on with the story. Villa sends his dirty tricks squad to an S&M club in San Francisco, and after many pages there, they assassinate one of the four cartel leaders. The team members fight and flirt some more, and that night Nacamulli the serial killer unsuccessfully attempts to rape Chrissy. The bad guys aren’t through; they have a sex video of the female US President and consider how to best use it.



Issue #5: Villa’s squad takes out various small operations associated with the cartel in an attempt to draw fire that leads to bigger targets. Nacamulli deliberately spikes one of their missions and has to be killed. Chrissie’s seduction of Villa bears fruit. The US president prepares for a live TV address, which the remaining cartel members will presumably use to air the embarrassing sex video. Chaykin’s point appears to be “Look what the bad guys are accomplishing by putting aside their differences and working together. What if the good guys did that too?” Chaykin’s editorial discusses his hard-won sobriety, and he speculates that the current wave of anti-authoritarianism on the right is actually the unintended fruit of the 1960s liberal counterculture. Chaykin declares a pox on both their houses. OK, easy to criticize, but harder to come up with an alternative that works.



Issue #6 Frank Villa’s team bickers more during a mission in California farmland. Villa shoots down a drone carrying a deadly payload toward television studio where the president’s live address is about to begin. The remaining cartel bosses go into hiding; one is assassinated in North Korea. But one is now in the President’s inner circle, his criminal past (and present) unrecognized. Villa’s three minions get their prison sentences commuted, and he and Chrissie ride off into the sunset. Chaykin promises a second volume of the series to continue the story. In his editorial, he confesses that his modern work reflects his “rage and fear at what the United States and the world have become in the past quarter century.” He wrote an ugly story because he sees the world as ugly.