Battlestar Galactica "Ruination" Battlestar Galactica (Classic) Vol. 3, #5 Dynamite Entertainment Written by Cullen Bunn Pencils by Alex Sanchez Colors by Salvatore Aiala Studios Letters by Sal Cipriano Cover A by Alex Sanchez and Daniela Miwa Published: 2016

Count Iblis makes his last, devastating play.

Read the summary of this issue at the Battlestar Wiki

Didja Know?

Battlestar Galactica (Classic) Volume 3 was a 5-issue mini-series published by Dynamite Entertainment in 2016.

The inside front cover of this issue reprints the same "the story so far" paragraph and title as the previous issue! I assigned my own title to the story, "Ruination", based on events and dialog in the issue.

Characters appearing or mentioned in this issue

Starbuck
Lucifer
Baltar
Sheba
Jolly
Cassiopeia
Dr. Salik
Boxey
Muffit
Apollo
Commander Adama
Count Iblis
Colonel Tigh
Rigel
Beings of Light (Seraphs)

Didja Notice? 

On pages 12-13, the Ship of Lights is destroyed in the battle against the Meclons, though the Seraphs themselves seem to survive the conflagration.

The Seraphs claim to have transported Baltar's "congregation" from the planet in the Iblis dimension to the fleet. This means that, besides the additional human contingent, the fleet also has a number of new alien denizens.

On pages 18-19, Commander Adama himself seems to be saying the words of the classic BSG preamble ("There are those who believe...") that was used in the theatrical version of the original BSG pilot "Saga of a Star World", ending with "far, far away, amongst the stars" instead of the traditional "somewhere beyond the heavens". This same version of the preamble appeared at the beginning of this storyline in "In the Beginning".

On page 19, panel 1, a game of triad is being played.

Both the images and Adama's closing narration on page 19 imply that the Seraphs continue to covertly exist within the fleet in their journey to Earth.

The story ends with the Colonial fleet having accepted the Cylons of Lucifer's basestar in peace. It's not entirely clear whether the basestar is still with the fleet as it continues its search for Earth. Also unknown is whether the peace extends to the rest of the Cylons ruled by Imperious Leader.

In the epilogue of the story, Count Iblis apparently brings the demonic skeletons on the planet back to life to serve as his followers and also assembles the spaceship debris ring around the planet into a new fleet of Meclon Raiders to chase down the rag-tag fleet. This may be meant to imply that the fleet has been freed from pursuit by the Cylons due to its truce with Lucifer's forces, but will now be hounded by the Meclons.

The ending of this storyline, left as is, poses a problem for all the licensed stories taking place later in continuity, which feature the fleet still being pursued by Cylons, and Lucifer and Baltar still filling their roles (for the most part) as "bad guys". Since there is no danger that Dynamite Entertainment will ever do a sequel story to this one (the publisher habitually ignores even its own continuity when it comes to BSG), we can assume that something happened in a story we will never see that drew Lucifer and his baseship, as well as Baltar, away from the rag-tag fleet again to resume their villainous ways; perhaps it was the same events that derailed the Meclons from being a lasting threat as well.