Battlestar Galactica Volume 1 - by Greg Pak (writer) and Nigel Raynor (artist)

"We can tear each other apart all on our own."

In the debris of a lost battlefield of the Third Colonial Conflict the crew of the Galactica discovers a medivac ship under Cylon attack.  But is it a Cylon trick?  When the Galactica crew learns that the besieged passengers aboard the medivac ship are all dead relatives of people within the fleet, Commander Adama becomes certain of it.  The already perilous situation spins out of control when the "survivors" circumvent the Galactica and contact the other ships in the fleet directly.

It only took three issues for my interest in the new Battlestar Galactica comic book series spin-off to cool to the point that I stopped reading/collecting it altogether.  Now that I have returned to and finally finished reading the first story in the Battlestar Galactica Volume I trade collection, I can only wonder what the hell my problem with the book was in the first place.  Glancing over my reviews of the first few issues, I'm guessing it was reading the serial issues while watching the events of Season Three unfold at the same time just did not mix.  I could not see the two stories happening in the same universe.

But times change and, now that I have been away from any and all forms of Battlestar Galactica for awhile, I had no problems whatsoever buying the Returners story arc as an authentic BSG tale.

That I could read the entire story as a whole and not as an episodic serial with several weeks between segments did not hurt, either.  My review of issue one pretty much covers my opinion of the arc as a whole.  The creative team captures the tense drama and white knuckle action of the series, with the byzantinian plot twists they throw at the reader every few pages feeling organic to plot, rather than coming across as cheap "Gotcha!" gimmicks.  I'll be picking up and cracking open Volume 2 at some point in the, I hope, not too distant future.  I've got some catching up to do.