Quirky Cat
Written on Nov 27, 2017
Stargate Atlantis Volume One starts off right where the TV series ends off; with Atlantis back on Earth (and having Earth deal with some of the repercussions of that). Greg LaRocque (Flash: the Return of Barry Allen), Scottie Watson (new to the field), Mark L. Haynes (24, the graphic novels) and J.C. Vaughn (Stepping Through the Stargate: Science, Archaeology and the Military in Stargate SG-1) team up to bring us back the series so many have known and loved (and anxiously awaited the return of).
I’ll confess I had a bit of trouble getting into this. I’m not sure if it was the switch of mediums here, or something else, but the first issue or so just felt…off. The characters seemed flat, the artwork slightly odd, pretty much everything. I almost decided to stop reading it at that point, but decided to power through it, and I have to say I’m really glad I did.
Volume one brings us back all of our Stargate Atlantis cast (minus those that didn’t make it to the finale, of course), John Sheppard, Teyla, Ronon, Rodney McKay and more. Additionally (and I think this might be what threw me off) some of the characters from SG-1 make appearances. Which makes sense, considering they’re all currently stationed on Earth. But still, it was a bit odd for me, and I was happy to see the groups get split up again (and yes, I know McKay was originally in SG-1, but you’ve got to admit his character grew a heck of a lot during his time on Atlantis).
I’ll admit ever since the ending of the TV series I’ve been curious about what would happen next for Atlantis. Would it permanently be stationed on Earth? Or would they gather a ZPM to get it off planet again? If it remained on Earth, would they spend the required resources to keep it shielded (and therefore invisible) or would they be willing to out themselves (and thus finally allow McKay and Zalenka to possibly start publishing papers?). These are just a few of the questions I’m been mulling over, and while they’re not all answered directly, the ones that are make the rest easy to guess. So I’m really very happy to have those answers finally, if nothing else.
On the whole this plot wasn’t bad, it wasn’t their strongest either, but it was decent. If I had to rate it I’d probably say it was somewhere around early season five level, where it felt like they were occasionally reaching for ideas (and most of those ideas ended up being tolerable, if nothing else). I am happy to have the series back though, so I’ll take acceptable writing. Hopefully once they’re back on their feet things will start improving dramatically. One can hope!
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