The Forged vol. 3: The Abbadon Strike

In vol. 1, Forged Team Scimitar-3 encountered the first signs of intelligent life in the universe, and it tried to wipe them out.  In vol. 2, Scimitar-3 returned home, was debriefed, had its leader get to know the Eternal Empress, and was nearly wiped out for what they knew.  In vol. 3, Scimitar-3 is part of the effort to take the fight to the enemy and… only one of them is wiped out in the first real encounter.  That sucks, but Forged are built tougher and they’re going to soldier on after this loss because these aliens, the Phobes, are here to wipe out the ten-thousand-year-old Eternal Empire and there’s only one way to stop them:  Complete and total genocide!

Vol. 1 of “The Forged” was a sci-fi action flick with little substance to back it up and I questioned whether following it any further was worth it.  That turned out to not be the case as Vol. 2 added a lot more depth and intrigue to the characters and their world and made me a lot more invested in the further adventures of Scimitar-3.  So it’s with some disappointment that I say the quality of vol. 3 is somewhere between the first two.  It’s got plenty of action with a decent amount of substance to back it up, but the intrigue of the previous volume largely falls by the wayside here.

While I like that co-writers Greg Rucka and Eric Trautmann are continuing to flesh out the members of the team and that they’re trying to do something different from your usual alien invader story, they’re a lot better at the former than the latter here.  I think I liked the story better when the Phobes were presented as unthinking killing machines and the fate of the universe hinged on their destruction.  That’s especially true when I’m not even sure if this series is going to continue to follow up on the developments of this volume.  If “The Forged” does come back for another round, one piece of advice:  Publish it in a regular-sized format – Mike Henderson’s art in this volume is nice, but not so much so that it’s worth paying an extra $5 to read it like this.