Jericho Season 4: Issue #4

Synopsis (SPOILER ALERT): As this issue begins, Valente is talking on the phone with Palmer telling him that he is approaching Jericho.  We then see that Palmer has Major Beck and Heather tied up and he informs Valente that he will interrogate them to get the location of Smith and that he will use their feelings for each other as leverage. Next, we see an airplane landing in the desert from which Valente and a full accompaniment of armed troops disembark.  Switch to Jake talking with Emily who is still trying to digest all of what Jake revealed to her about Smith.  Jake mentions that he still needs to get more information from Smith, and Emily suggests that she try and talk with him because she believes that Smith will confide in her.  The scene then shifts to Mimi and Stanley’s farm where the Texas militia member Benji has Mimi and Dale at gunpoint and explains that Texas is trying to take down the A.S.A.  He takes them back up to the house where they discover more Texas militia troops who have Stanley at gunpoint.  Switch back to Palmer who is interrogating Beck and Heather but gets interrupted by a call.  As he leaves, Heather tells Beck that he better not reveal Smith’s location because he is their best chance to bring down the A.S.A.  However, Beck says that he would rather live with the A.S.A. than without her.

Shift to Smith’s house where Emily is talking with him on the porch over coffee and muffins.  During their conversation, he gets a text from someone named “Sergeant” that Valente’s plane has arrived, but he does not visibly react to it.  Emily asks Smith about what happened to his wife and he tells her about the J&R soldiers that broke into their house in Afghanistan and killed her and that they were never brought to justice.  Meanwhile, Jake is reviewing he computer files he took from Smith finding information about Afghanistan and tries to contact Beck, but gets no answer.  Switch to Palmer who is informing Valente that Beck has given up the location of Smith.  Valente is pleased, and then he heads into the detention center outside of Jericho where Hawkins is being held.  The two meet face to face and Valente approaches Hawkins rather smugly only to find that his prisoner has broken free of his handcuffs and outside the guards have been overcome.  Hawkins then informs Valente that he will make a full confession about J&R’s involvement in the September attacks and that it will be televised.  Back at the farm, Mimi confesses to Stanley that she helped Benji because she thought he was from the Eastern states and felt it was the right thing to do and she thought they have a responsibility to make the country better.  Dale then tells them that he thinks he can make a deal with the Texans saying that “for the right price, your enemy can become your ally”.  At Smith’s house, Valente’s A.S.A. troops storm in only to find a booby trap the blows that entire house as they enter it.  Switch to Jake telling Emily that he found some of Smith’s files about a J&R project in Afghanistan that went bad.  Emily connects this to what Smith was telling her, and they do some more digging in the files.  The issue closes as they find evidence that Valente had given the order to have Smith’s wife killed and everything Smith has done since has been his attempt to get revenge.

Review/Commentary:  So they actually got this issue out on time (and I'm not running too late with this post either), and what an issue it is!  The book keeps up its relentless pace as it continues to unfold its many twists and turns while also delivering an engaging story.  Part of me would like for them to slow it down a bit and not take the fire hose approach to telling the story.  But then again, we’re not getting any filler here, just a lot of what made Jericho a great story to begin with.  The artist for the series changes again, with Claudia Balboni stepping in to do the pencils this time.  But the change is pretty much seamless, and she does a good job with the character renditions.  Kalinda Vasquez is still the main writer, with series scribes Dan Shotz and Robert Levine still getting story credit as well.  Issue #4 is another solid entry in this series that continues to stick close to the spirit of the television series while also broadening the story.  If you are a Jericho fan and you have not been reading this series book, I highly recommend you jump on board (the TPB collecting all five Season 4 episodes is currently scheduled for a October 2013 release).  Issue #5 is set to wrap up the “Season 4” arc, but I expect another mini-series to follow on the footsteps of that one.  Or maybe they will do the right thing and just make this an ongoing series.  TFAW.com has the due date listed now as October 9th, but I think that is a bit optimistic.  Still, I expect that it should hit the stands at some point in October and I will be eagerly awaiting its arrival.