Luckily for us, we know that Skeletor has failed. Our resident super duper evil baddie doesn't end up activating Gamma Halo and another Composer on Earth since this story arc is set in the universe's past. However, with that in mind, I'm more than certain that they'll try to kill off Fred, Kelly, or Linda. It seems like something they'd do. This new monitor, Three Digit Number Random Words, just doesn't shut up, though, do they?

The same issues I have with the art, story, structure, and pacing remain in this issue just as those preceding it. I don't have much hope for the remaining three issues to be any different. With the exception of Thorne's story, Escalation had been gone downhill pretty fast with the first rumblings of Spirit of Fire in the story. This series shouldn't have found itself so grand in scale because it hasn't worked once. Save for the half-assed reveal of Spirit of Fire, the story was actually pretty solid and had a lot of potential. It had all sorts of exciting action, adventure, intrigue, and mystery going for it in a political setting. Now Escalation is becoming like every other shitty BOOM!, BANG!, and POW! comic in the series.

Brian Reed doesn't need to write everything. There are many other talented peeps at 343i and definitely many more independent writers out there who would be thrilled to write Halo.