In Review: The Last Starfighter #2 The Ko-Dan Armada rises again!

Synopsis: Join the team—and say goodbye! Xur may be gone, but like a hydra with its head cut off, the Ko-Dan Armada rises again! Naxos Ko-Ma, a.k.a. the Reaper, is determined to see the end of the Star League—and now that Earthling Alex Rogan is leading it, the lamb looks ripe for slaughter. And Alex isn’t the only one in the crosshairs. His girlfriend, Maggie, stands battle-ready alongside him—but will her first real firefight on an alien planet be her last?

The Story

Picking the story up from where issue one left off, Centauri and Maggie have travelled to another world to recruit a promising new pilot called Hanu. However, they arrive just as Hanu’s world is attacked by Ko-Ma, who devastates the planet and murders Hanu’s family. Although she tries, Maggie is unable to save them—but the bigger question is why Centauri left her to fend for herself in the middle of a firefight.

After they bring Hanu back to the Star League base on Rylos, he is quickly placed with the other five Starfighter candidates. However, before they can work together, it becomes evident that they each have individual issues to overcome. To that end, Alex throws them into a training mission using the new single-pilot fighter ships known as Stargrazers.

Complicating matters is the fact that one of the Starfighter candidates is Grig’s son. Alex is happy to have him aboard, as he tested as the very best of all the candidates, but Grig has other ideas and implores Alex to pull him from the training mission. The issue closes as the mission gets underway—and, right from the start, things do not go well.

Artwork

Willi Roberts and Francesco Segala continue to provide some strong interior artwork. I’m particularly enjoying the rundown appearance of most of the settings on Rylos, which illustrates just how stretched the Star League has become. I also loved the panels in which we see Maggie trying to help Hanu save his family during Ko-Ma’s brutal attack.

Overall

MadCave continues to breath new life into The Last Starfighter, which is a film that has been gagging for some sort of sequel for over 40 years. This comic is the closest we have got to it and I for one am really enjoying the ride. But what the hell is wrong with Centauri? I guess we’ll find out soon enough.