Battlestar Galactica (Classic) #0 - Dynamite Entertainment

BATTLESTAR GALACTICA (CLASSIC) No. 0, October 2018

“Set soon after the events of the first season” of Glen A. Larson’s 1978 American science fiction television programme, it must have been abundantly clear to this “Dynamite Entertainment” title’s audience that writer John Jackson Miller was somewhat inspired by “one of the series best-loved episodes in which another surviving Battlestar was discovered” when he was busy penning the narrative behind this “miniseries timed for Battlestar Galactica's 40th anniversary year!” Yet whilst the former “Comics Retailer” editor’s script for this 35¢ priced sixteen-page periodical is undoubtedly imbued with plenty of pulse-pounding Colonial Viper action as Apollo, Starbuck and Boomer lead a hostile alien assault squadron away from the human convoy, it’s premise of the ragtag fugitive fleet encountering a handful of distinctive extra-terrestrial species all within the space of a few “centons” is as arguably disconcerting as Commander Adama’s decision to “cross the narrow neck separating the two parts” of the Kiernu Empire without the permission of the territory’s fuming chancellor; “Do not insult me with your oath, Adama. This day I have seen what the word of a human is worth!”

To debatably make matters worse however, the franchise’s primary antagonists, the Cylons, are seemingly relegated to an all too brief camo where three of the robotic race’s raiders are quickly dispatched whilst ‘pursuing’ an Okaati transport in the middle of nowhere. Just why a trio of the “military androids with silver armour” happen to be patrolling a nebula dominated by the Comitat’s formidable-looking taskforce dishearteningly may well have smacked of overly-contrived “felgercarb” to many readers, especially as the Bucketheads’ heavy fighters “don’t seem to be firing at whoever it is they’re following”...

Quite possibly the biggest draw to Issue Zero of “Battlestar Galactica (Classic)” therefore, is the publication’s artwork. Whether it be Sean Chen and Cris Peter’s “cover harkening back to the original Marvel Battlestar Galactica series”, or Daniel HDR’s interiors, the comic certainly seems to provide plenty of nostalgia to “those kids in the audience every night” who watched the show in the Late Seventies. Indeed, despite the fact that the Porto Alegre-born illustrator’s lion-like sketches of Parrin and Grust unnervingly seem better suited to an episode of “Star Trek: The Animated Series” than NBCUniversal Television Distribution’s show, it is easy to imagine actor Lorne Greene’s instantly recognisable booming out across the Brazilian’s star field-based storyboards.

Written by: John Jackson Miller, Art by: Daniel HDR, and Letters by: Taylor Esposito