Terrorwar #4 - Image Comics

TERRORWAR No. 4, July 2023

Badly bogged down with some incredibly word-heavy, discussion sequences, it’s clear that Saladin Ahmed was extremely keen to ensure that this comic’s audience fully understood just why Representative Ronali had selected some “little rent-a-crew from the Lower Quarters” to be her civilisation’s saviours. Indeed, the “Eisner Award winning American” even goes so far as to introduce the highly talkative Doctora Z into his already colourful cast of characters, just so the prominent researcher can arguably repeat the same message just spouted by Blue City Central Command.

Frustratingly though, this earnestness results in a somewhat slow and sedentary script, which appears to seemingly swing around in circles for seventeen-pages until Muhammad Cho’s team finally come face-to-face with one of the massive Terror attacks everyone has previously been speaking about. This confrontation however, is arguably just as disappointing as all the babble before it, as the specialist contractors simply deploy some state-of-the-art ghost traps smack in the centre of their jump point and then effortlessly gun down the trio of terrifying ectoplasmic monstrosities that foolishly manifest.

Much more successful is debatably this book’s cliff-hanger conclusion, which depicts the squad’s leader rather stupidly failing to follow his own good advice and single-handedly attempting a rescue mission for a kid supposedly trapped in the ruins of a local settlement. Sadly, the “Boss-man” deciding to suddenly act like the Lone Ranger and ordering his colleagues to stay behind, does smack of the narrative needing to have him tackle the threat alone so he’ll need saving himself. But at least this one moment provides the publication with a genuine sense of threat for its central protagonist, apart from Ronali’s gun-toting guards constantly waving their firearms around whenever their ‘guests’ suggest they won’t take on her suicide mission.

Disappointingly, Dave Acosta’s sketches are debatably just as lack-lustre as the penmanship, with all the comic’s numerous characters looking rather roughly hewn from panel to panel. In addition, whenever a figure is required to emphasise a particular speech or emotion, the illustrator pencils them as a somewhat cartoony caricature, with Cho’s red beret wearing, muscle-bound female friend suffering from this artistic affliction the worst.

Written by: Saladin Ahmed, Pencils by: Dave Acosta, Inks by: Jay Leisten, and Colors by: Walter Pereyra