Jericho Season 3 - Civil Wars: Issue #5

Synopsis (SPOILER ALERT):  Jake and Hawkins Thread: Valente informs President Tomarchio that John Smith has escaped and that Jake Green and Robert Hawkins broke him out. Tomarchio tells Valente to get him back in custody as soon as possible and Valentte tells him that he has hired Mr. Palmer to track Smith down. Tomarchio then goes to a press conference that he will use to sell the people of the ASA on an invasion of the eastern states. Meanwhile, once Jake and Hawkins have made it a safe distance from the prison facility, they use the battery of the car they have liberated to short out the tracking device surgically implanted in Smith. They succeed at that and Smith takes them to a fallout shelter he had set up as a refuge. It had been discovered by J&R and ransacked, but he had a thumb drive safely stashed away that has a mirrored backup of the J&R network. Their return to the fallout shelter sets off an alarm and a drone is dispatched to bomb the location. This was part of Smith’s plan, though. He has a secret exit set up to escape from the shelter, and after the bomb levels the facility, Jake, Hawkins, and Smith will be assumed dead.

Jericho Thread: The people of Jericho listen in disgust to Tomarchio’s speech calling for an attack. But they have little time to fret as word breaks that Major Patrella has been found murdered. Major Beck will be held responsible because this happened under his watch and Patrella left town quickly without an escort. And if Beck is relieved of his command, then all of the ASA officers sympathetic to his resistance movement will likely withdraw their support. Eric Green and several others suspect Dale Turner had something to do with the murder and they confront Dale about it, though he denies any culpability. They then track Peter, one of Dale’s people, who is acting suspiciously and catch him as he is trying to dispose with the murder weapon. They turn Peter in and convince him to confess on the promise that the people of Jericho will protect his family in the coming conflict. This gets Beck off the hook so that he can carry on with his plans to stand against the coming ASA aggression.

Comments: Finally! After a bit of a delay, issue #5 hits the stands! And it is yet another good one in this comic book continuation of the Jericho television series. For the most part I enjoyed this issue, but I felt like they rushed through quite a number of things and practically left our heads spinning with the amount of story that the issue crammed in. But then they are trying to get a lot done in just six issues (just like the second season tried to get a lot done in just seven episodes). I also was not quite convinced that Peter would have agreed so easily to turn himself in and confess. But then we did not see the convincing done by Eric and the others to bring him to this decision (we only get a brief recap). Just one of the ways they cut corners to fit everything in. And at this point, I am wondering how well they will be able to wrap this story up in only one more issue. They have set up a lot to follow, so let’s hope they don’t try to resolve everything in just the 22 pages allotted to issue #6. What I am hoping is that they will give us a partial resolution to some of the story threads then set up a continuation into another mini-series or (even better) an ongoing comic series. In any case, this issue keeps up the quality of the ones that preceded it (despite its whirlwind pace), and it definitely has me looking forward the the upcoming finale.