"Risk and Reward" Battlestar Galactica #4 (Dynamite) Written by Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning Illustrated by Cezar Razek Cover by Alex Ross 2013

Apollo guides the human guerillas into freeing the planet Equellus from the Cylons; Starbuck is less successful with convincing his own alternate to bring the war to the Cylons.

Story Summary

This issue opens 3 months after the end of "Acts of Defiance". Apollo guides the human guerillas into freeing the low-tech agrarian planet Equellus from the Cylons. Many of the liberated humans from the planet (including Vella and Puppis from "The Lost Warrior") are brought back to the base world (called Cache) to help fight for the cause. The resistance group gains information revealing that a group of pirates led by a fumarello-smoking character hit a basestar three months back and Apollo realizes it's Starbuck (though not the Starbuck he thinks).

Meanwhile, Starbuck finds a secret room aboard the Galactica keyed to his DNA where the alternate Starbuck has gathered and reverse-engineered various pieces of Cylon technology, including the head and partial body of an Imperious Leader. Starbuck convinces his other self to help him find Apollo by promising him the Colonial cache he and Apollo had tracked down back in "Time and Punishment". Starbuck activates his Viper's emergency locator to alert Apollo and Apollo responds, but it winds up drawing Baltifer's basestar right to them through a temporal warp hole; Dr. Zee has managed to reverse engineer the temporal technology from the data gleaned from Starbuck's Viper when it was briefly in Cylon possession in "Time and Punishment" and "Acts of Defiance".

The Galactica cloaks itself thanks to the technology alt-Starbuck and his engineers have derived from Cylon tech and the ship is unnoticed by the basestar. But Baltifer uses Zee's new temporal weapons to attack Cache, causing widespread disaster across the planet's surface, forcing Adama and Apollo to deliver themselves to the Cylons to stop the attacks and save their followers. While Baltifer keeps his word not to attack with the temporal weapons again, he twists the spirit of the agreement by launching the basestar's full force of Raiders to destroy every trace of humanity on the planet.

CONTINUED IN BATTLESTAR GALACTICA #5

Didja Know?

The individual issues of this series do not have titles. I made up the titles myself, usually based on a concept or bit of dialog from the issue.

Didja Notice?  

For some reason, the alternate Adama is depicted a bit differently on the cover than he is in the story. Here he has no beard (though there is some stubble), his hair is long, and the triple scars on his forehead are angled in the wrong direction.

This issue opens with Apollo's combat log, in which he states he has been in the altered timeline for 3 months now. That should be 3 quatrons in Colonial terminology.

The story begins on the planet Equellus, in the Hatari sector. Apollo first visited this world in "The Lost Warrior". In this timeline, Red Eye is in charge of Cylon forces taking control of the planet.

The man in the middle of the three who are hanged by the Cylons, despite their collaboration, appears to be Lacerta, the local strong-arm of the town seen in "The Lost Warrior". Ironically, Red-Eye is the one in charge here, whereas Lacerta commanded the damaged Cylon in the original episode. Notice that the Centurion behind Lacerta has knocked the hat off his head in order to place the noose around his neck.

On page 2, notice that Red-Eye's horse is armored in the same manner it was in "The Lost Warrior".

For some reason, the visible eye of Red-Eye's horse has turned red in the panels on page 3, when it should be a normal horse eye. Presumably it's just a coloring error, as there is no reason to think that the horse is robotic or cyborg.

On page 4, Apollo is dressed in a poncho and cowboy hat, looking similar to the Man with No Name played by Clint Eastwood in the classic 1966 spaghetti-western The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.

On pages 2-6, Apollo and his band of guerillas rescue the inhabitants of Equellus, including Vella and her son Puppis, whom he befriended in the original timeline in "The Lost Warrior".

On page 10, the two Starbucks refer to each other as "frimp", "vapor-sucking", and "pogee-eating". "Frimp" seems to be a Colonial term akin to "lamebrain", first used by the super scout children in episodes of Galactica 1980. "Vapor-sucking" is a reference to smoking and, possibly, to smoking something stronger than his common fumarellos, such as cannabis. "Pogee-eating" basically means "shit-eating", though the key word has been pronounced "pogees" (with an "s") in the TV episodes.

On page 19, Apollo is mistakenly drawn with his laser holstered on his right hip; he is left-handed.