Oblivion Song vol. 4

The last time we were in “Oblivion,” I mentioned that the Faceless Men were a genuinely interesting challenge facing Nathan Cole and the rest of the cast.  Vol. 4 manages to dispel a lot of that interest early on.  That’s when we find out that they’ve managed to learn English and are able to communicate normally among themselves.  Which is how we learn that the group which kidnapped Ed’s community has done so in order to learn more about them, with an aim to find out how to get to Earth.  One amongst them, Dakuul, has a more personal interest in humans:  He just likes killing them.  This is frowned on by his superiors, but he’s part of some elite warrior cast, and blah, blah, blah, they’re just funny-looking humans after all.

As for the actual humans, things are more promising on that front.  The military has a plan to get the humans back, and it’s a good one that relies on how both worlds overlap with each other.  Before that happens, there’s some drama between the Cole brothers, and a surprise appearance by a Faceless Man that needs to be worked through.  When the actual rescue mission kicks off, Robert Kirkman and Lorenzo De Felici deliver some great “Aliens”-esque action and some genuine struggle as both sides find themselves pretty evenly matched.  The last third of this volume is arguably a high point for the series as I didn’t expect the mission to turn out the way it did.  Vol. 4 does leave us with an intriguing final complication that looks to hold my interest until vol. 5 arrives.  Whenever it does.