Let's Talk About Mr Terrific #5

If you have a good memory you will remember what happen last issue 

Our hero Michael and a random purple giant alien started a riot in the universe´s worst prison ship ever
but as they were fighting the few guards that they had on their way more were about to come
to which michael exclaims "good, we are gonna need them"

Why are they going to need them for, lets jump in.

as always my comments are blue, thestory is black

Spoilers 

MISTER TERRIFIC #5 by Eric Wallace and Gianluca Gugliotta

The issue starts with Michael revealing that he needed all the guards to go after them to do... nothing.
absolutely nothing happens to the rest of the guards, he didnt needed them for anything and such comment on last issue was unnecessary

 
Michael and all the prisioners he released fight back againts the guards but they are being held back quickly, Michael explains that since more guards are coming its better to release all the prisoners to fight back in a major riot.

Michael´s dialog about this sounds forced, this is something very simple and easy to understand but he explains in such a way only to make him sound smart.

However Michael and Purple guy discover that there is only one cell that they cant access, so by being separated from the rest they think it could be a weapon or something too dangerous to be release
a new alien who is never named so im just going to call him Alien #3 appears and says that the Kryl are retreating, But Michael realizes that there is something worst.

I could kind of accept that the Kryl have a really crappy security which is why Michael and the rest manage to escape so easily but is not the same to believe that they have absolutely no plan against a riot, no contingency at all, the prisoners escape their cells, no hope, the ship is lost.
There was an actual reason why the slavers of the 1600s-1700s toss those the slaves to the sea to their deaths, the reason was cause slavery was actually illegal by sea, sometimes they were persecuted by the marine so they kill the slaves to get rid of the evidence.
There is an actual cruel and cold logic to it, but Wallace comment that slavery is illogical without entering on any detail about that in the past or the actual plot, we dont know for sure if this other alien are innocent, they could be criminals or something else, Michael speculated that since he was kidnapped all of them could be too.
The only reason, in plot why this is happening is cause Mr Terrific is black, and such thing happen to black slaves in the past, is not subtle about it and lacks sense in the plot, and I know that i wanted I thought that if the color could be use as an intereting subject if used correctly and if its relevant to the plot, but i didnt meant something like this.

Now their only hope to escape is to use whatever is inside the locked cell, they dont know what it is, but is a chance, however The purple Alien dont agree

But then Michael talks to him and he opens the gate anyways =>
 

This is a single useless page,  Michael is about to open the locked cage but purple alien tells him not to cause it could be dangerous, to which Michael and alien #3 just tell him that they will die anyways so lets better take a chance, so Michael opens the cell.
What was the point of that? this is an scene that you can easily be eliminated from the comic and the story remains 100% intact, its not advancing the plot on anyways or giving us any useful info on the characters, its not building up any suspense cause we already had this talk on page 4

 

So they open the cell and inside is just an alien, thats it
 

This is not only a single panel, its the entire page, but the angle is honestly terrible, The Alien inside is the whole point of the reveal but we cant barely see her anyways, it could had been done much better without even adding much drawing to it.

The alien inside is probably the most interesting thing in the comic so far.
It is named Py´lothia comes from a race that has powers of energy manipulation, the male can expel energy while the female can store it, and once they are born they go through a phase(puberty) where they stabilize their gender for the rest of their life, but this Alien never stabilized and has both genders

Yes, this is a Hermaphrodite Alien that can shot energy
and is actually quite original

now since it has both genders she/he can stores larges amounts of energy and control and expel it, but she/he is also consider an abomination for her own race and is sold to slavery by her family

 I will praise this a lot, this is a very interesting concept developed in a really cunning way, the whole angle of her/him(I actually apologize if this use of pronouns bother anyone but it seems the correct term) being rejected and mistreated by society for something like this that he/she has no control about and her whole attitude about it feels genuine, Py'lothia feels like a reject and a monster cause thats how he/she was treated and just believe is correct.

Its a very Original idea and it could had been a good point to explore if it wasnt for this.

Thats right, Michael once again feels depress over the brutal beat up that he gave Megamind, and because of it empathize with Py'lothia

I understand what Wallace tries to do here, it just doesnt work at all, Michael cannot possibly put himself in the same position of Py'lothia for something like that

Py´lothia wanted to die cause she/he was rejected and felt like a monster cause of it
Michael was depress cause he tried to kill someone but he had a legitimate reason to do so and when he wanted to commit suicide it was cause his wife died
so i have no idea what kind of parallelism is Wallace trying to do here but i know its not working 

Now the Kryl are preparing a giant gun to destroy the worst prison ship and kill everyone, and the next 5 pages of the book pretty much goes like this:

"hey you can manipulate energy, you can save us all"
"no, i deserve to die, im a monster"
"no, you arent"
"yes i am"
"no, you arent"
"yes i am"
"no, you arent"
"yes i am"
"no, you arent, you are cool"
"really!, then i think im gonna save everyone"

Im not kidding is 5 pages of having michael bond for 5 mins with Py'lothia telling her/him how special she/he is without even knowing her/him.

Py'lothia uses her/his powers to absorb the blast of the attack of the Kryl and reflects it Destroying their ship

GENOCIDE

Py´lothia destroys the kryl´s ship obviously killing hundreds if not thousands of aliens to save the slave ship, michael fixes his T-Spheres to go back home and he says goodbye to the aliens who now have decided to band together to face the evil empire of the kryl.

Py´lothia chooses to stay with them too to fight the Kryl and says good bye to Michael, she also ask him  what does his name mean, Michael replies that it comes from Mye-Kal which means "One who resembles God", and asks what does Py´lothia means
It means "Harmony".

so michael returns home commenting on how he has always been defined by his own intelligence and how he needs to reexamine his own Anger issues, but the last 2 pages devote around a guy named stephen wyzeck, The person next to Donald on issue 2, but im gonna call him alien #4 cause his head is HUGE on this pages so i think he is an alien.
Alien#4 is in a party when he receives a phone call saying that Michael holt is going to retire and he is going to choose a successor to which he responds
 

THE END

This issue and Arc were definitely better than the last one, but there are still major problems on both writing and art.

the plot is forced into some directions that really lack logic but still work on some cases but not all. 
The way the Kryl just give up trying to recover the ship and decide to destroy it only to imitate the ways of the real life slavers is extremely forced and badly. We could have made the connection without a full page of michael explaining that slavery is bad and that black ppl used to be slaves and were drown before being set free.

the real problem is the Kryl, the all race as the villain of the story just SUCKS, they dont look menacing, they never act intelligently and the almost never appear on this and the last comic, the are practically non-entities.
its just a classic "show dont tell" problem, we are told why the Kryl are evil but never shown a reason to actually care about them.

But the biggest surprise of the issue is Harmony, its an original idea that is well executed for the most part, the downsize is how rush is her whole character arc, and how forced is the "relation" with Michael.
Wallace said in an interview that this arc was suppouse to be 3 issues long but was cut to give more space to the next, thats a shame cause with more time and a better development it might had work
Instead what we have is a "run against the clock" situation where Michael just needs to cheer up Py´lothia's self steam despite the years of trauma , and it just doesnt work, the dialog is repetitive and safe played.

the Art definitely took a dive in this issue and absolutely inconsistent, the aliens look different from one page to the next and all of them look forgettable

Im gonna give this a 6 out of 10

there is still hope