Fantastic reviews/scans of the regular AF series - Thanks! Excellent sci-fi series, and Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez was an artistic genius!  As far as I'm concerned, his art is right up there with John Byrne, early Frank Miller, Simonson, etc.

OK, so I finally did the heavy lifting and dug out my Atari Force collection. I read issue #1 last night...





Man, this opening installment comes on like gangbusters right from the get go! We're thrown right into the action, with Dart and Blackjack storming into a bar to attack General Ki and his men, in a style somewhat reminiscent of the way in which each of the Star Wars films throw us straight into the action. From there, the story jumps from scene to scene -- cutting from location to location -- in a very cinematic way, as we are introduced to the principal cast and glean little scraps of information about them.

Of these new characters, I agree with you shax, that Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez is clearly most enamored with Dart...and why not? She's a great looking character, with her weapon and gadget-packed flight suit and oh-so-cool facial and body tattoos. Plus, as you noted, she's an usually strong female lead character for the times and of Indian heritage to boot, which I remember thinking back in the day was VERY unusual for an American comic.

As for the rest of the cast, I stand by my earlier comment about Blackjack being a likable enough character -- not my favourite in the series, by any means, but he's OK. The thing with Blackjack is that, as well as supplying some comic relief and, later, some romantic turmoil, he's an endearing mess: he's a slob and a cad, but he's got charisma, and that goes a long way.

Babe is an immediately vulnerable and likable character, and I agree that the thing about her race turning into sentient mountains is great -- really imaginative and it fascinated me as a kid. Also, I've long thought that Gerry Conway is making a point about our real world treatment of wild animals with Babe's abduction. I also agree with you that Chris Champion isn't terribly interesting at this point, other than the revulsion and mocking laughter that his utterly ridiculous 1980s hairstyle and headband induces!

Pakrat makes a big impression in this first issue and, to elaborate on my earlier comment about him being my joint-favourite character in the series, I think that most of that is simply due to how he looks. I mean, he's a rodent-esque, humanoid thief and cat burglar. What's not to like?! I like him for the same reasons that people like Rocket Racoon in the Guardians of the Galaxy film. Plus, I've always had a thing for thieves in fiction and often used to play one, when my friends and I had a game of Dungeons & Dragons. I was also a big fan of John Masefield's children's Christmas classic, The Box of Delights, which features talking mice and rats, so I think that may have predisposed me towards a character like Pakrat. Ultimately though, I think he's just a way cool character and I was struck by that again last night while reading issue #1.

As for Morphea, at this point she's probably the least memorable member of the main cast, but that will change as the series progresses. The Dark Destroyer (man, I've always thought that was a terrible name for a villain) also makes a sinister entrance, dissolving General Ki in a pool of acid. That final panel, showing the sizzling remains of the general, makes for an excellent and slightly ironic cliff-hanger, as, elsewhere, Blackjack says that he can feel that his luck is changing.

Garcia-Lopez's artwork is stunning throughout; straight away, from page 1, the art is beautifully detailed, with an exciting and dynamic panel layout -- I love, for instance, how that gun-wielding hand comes in from outside the regular panel borders on the first double-page spread (pages 2 & 3). It serves to emphasis the panic and speed with which Dart and Blackjack's attack on the bar is being met by General Ki's men...as if things are happening so fast that the comic panels can't contain the action. Garcia-Lopez's work is wonderfully cinematic in this comic and his worlds look lived in and very authentic.

All in all, I think this issue is a stunning debut and a very rewarding slice of Space Opera. It plays its cards close to its chest, in terms of character motivation and back story, but offers just enough to hook the reader. This wasn't the first issue of Atari Force that I picked up (I didn't see an issue until my best friend bought issue #6 and the first one that I actually owned myself was #14), but had it been, it would've definitely hooked me as an 11-year-old boy.





You make some interesting points about Lydia Perez's death, but I think that your experience of knowing the character prior to issue #1 of AF volume 2, is (and certainly was at the time) very uncommon. The original AF comics were, as you know, packaged along with various Atari video games -- they weren't available on the newsstands (as far as I understand it). So, I think that the vast majority of people jumping onto the series with volume 2 wouldn't have really even been aware of the first series -- and, if they were, might only have read one comic of it.

So, to most readers at the time, Lydia Perez was as unknown as any of the other characters being introduced. Having her die in childbirth is simply a plot device to lend Chris Champion's character a more troubled past. I don't believe for a second that Gerry Conway was really expecting any of his readers to be at all familiar with the character, as you are, having read all those earlier giveaway comics.

Whoops...typo on my part! Babe is definitely male...and so is Pakrat. What makes you think that Pakrat is female in the first issue?




That's right, of course -- his God awful name isn't revealed until later on in the series. He's just a mysterious and threatening villain at this point.




I'm gonna say, "no". Of course, they had to expect there to have been some fans of the original series following this second one, but very, very few, I would think.




I disagree. The continuity you refer to is simply presented as backstory in this series. There aren't -- as far as I remember -- any editor's notes, for example, telling readers that these old events occurred in issue #__ of the first series. It seems obvious to me that Conway and DC were presenting this new Atari Force as a brand new thing, which didn't require any knowledge of the earlier series from readers. Of course, there is an article about the evolution of the series in the first issue, which tells you all about the Atari giveaway comics, but nevertheless, I think this series is very much meant to be a stand alone presentation.




Hmmm...maybe I'm misunderstanding, or maybe it's because I have no emotional investment in the character, since I've never read the first series, but I'm having a hard time understanding what you think is so "wrong" about Chris Champion's mother having died in childbirth.




Ha! I'll try to. I'm gonna read issue #2 tonight before i go to sleep, so I'll comment on that tomorrow. Having nearly put my back out moving long boxes in order to dig these issues out, I certainly plan to re-read them all.

It was already mentioned by another poster, so I'm not spoiling anything at this point by saying that the circumstances surrounding Lydia's death are going to be explored in much greater detail later on. I can't say whether or not that story will change how you think about her death, but I'll be curious to see your thoughts on it when we get that far.

Just had a look at the three pages in issue #1 featuring Pakrat and I don''t see anything indicating that it's a female. I don't see anything indicating he's specifically male either, but he looks male in his first appearance and obviously it's established later that he is male.




Hmmm...yeah, I guess what you're saying is right, but maybe it was just laziness and Conway just took the bits he did like from the old series and ran with them. Still, it seems clear to me that DC didn't really care whether you had read the first series or not, and definitely wrote this volume 2 as its own, self-contained story. I mean, I have never read the first mini-series and I've certainly never missed it when reading volume 2.




Yeah, I'm still not seeing it. Time has moved on and one of the characters from the old series is dead now. So what? Things like that happen in life.

As Crimebuster says, actually, there is a little more to Lydia's death, but at this point (issue #1), I'm not seeing how killing her off is "messed up" or "wrong". I don't perceive it as sexist either, especially given the strong female-led cast in this volume. I think it is what it is: something to make Chris and Martin's backstory more "interesting". Maybe I'd feel differently if I'd "met" the character in the first series.

OK, thoughts on issue #2, which I re-read last night...

Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez's artwork really shines again here, with lots of lovely detail, a really good sense of design and some fantastic looking spaceships -- I particularly like the Dark Destroyer's ship. The story throws us straight into the action once again, which I like, and the combat scenes featuring Dart and Blackjack are really exciting and brilliantly conveyed in Garcia-Lopez's art.

However, one thing I've never really liked, is the design of the Warbeast. It looks ridiculous! So ridiculous, in fact, that it's hard to take it seriously as the threat it's clearly intended to be. It's an unusually crappy concept from Garcia-Lopez, whose design sensibilities have been spot on so far in this series.

It also makes me laugh that Martin Champion smokes a pipe as part of his characterisation. That's just lazy comics short-hand for showing us that he's part of an older generation. But a 40-something smoking a pipe would've been outdated in 1984 -- nevermind someone doing it in the far flung future! I mean, people still smoked pipes in the mid-80s, sure, but they were usually part of the World War 2 generation, rather than the 40-something babyboomers, which is the sort of age that Martin Champion presumably is. Giving him a pipe seems like a lazy, Silver Age throwback.

Overall though, I really enjoyed this issue and thought that it was only slightly less impressive than the first.

Now, some direct comments to your comments, shax...




Jeez, tough crowd!

I think the new characters are, mostly, a pretty interesting bunch. Dart and Pakrat, as I've previously said, are my clear favourites, but I think in this issue we begin to see more of why Morphea is such a great character. Blackjack is his usual, slobby, wise-cracking self, but I'm not offended by him. The Champions, on the other hand...




Yeah, Chris is an annoying, sulky brat. I'd forgotten how much I disliked this character until I re-read this issue. Also, the whole soap opera with his girlfriend and her disapproving father is really tiresome and annoying.




Is Chris Champion actually sucking his thumb there?!




As noted above, I think Morphea is becoming a more interesting character with this issue. You've read a bit further ahead than me so far, so I hope I'm not spoiling anything for you by saying that Morphea is there precisely for the reason of observing Martin and Chris Champion. She works for Atari Institute as a psychiatrist and, as we see in this issue, she's an empath too, which has got to be a handy skill for a psychiatrist to have! Her initial purpose is to act as something of a counselor for the farther and son pair, following the death of Lydia, which left them estranged from each other. Later on in the series though she becomes a carer for Babe.




As discussed yesterday, we now know that this isn't the case.




Again, I really enjoyed Pakrat's appearance in this issue, although showing how ferocious he becomes when cornered for too issues running is perhaps over-egging the pudding slightly. That said, I remember that, when I was 12 or 13, I thought Pakrat's whole "dangerous when cornered" thing was very, very cool. I also really like the Viper-Hounds that pursue Pakrat in this issue too; they look really threatening -- a lot more threatening than the Warbeast, in fact.

Oh dear God...! I honestly thought that was a simple vehicle for getting Chris to experience a little more self-hatred. Never once occurred to me that we're going back to that encounter as a major plot line.





I had to look twice too. No, I don't think he is, but that was definitely my first reaction.




She's made an opaque reference to this. Aren't they about two decades late sending someone in to check in on Martin? He's been living as a recluse in a pod on their station for that long now, just sending probes into space and ranting about an abstract cosmic threat he has no evidence to support. Even I'd find the dude crazy. Crazier still that he ends up being right!