Comic Review: gen:LOCK “game:OVER Part 2/hope:LESS Part 1”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Chase, Caliban, and Cammie face the Sycorax group within Siege, but are all defeated handily with Chase’s mind being captured. When Cammie tries to tell the rest of the group, they chalk her warnings up to her retreating into Siege to cope with last season’s events and make her swear to not play anymore, though that doesn’t keep her from looking for tips about Sycorax.

In the next issue, Val checks in on Kazu and learns how his grandfather also fought the Union in his time, which is what inspired Kazu to join the army in the first place. Cammie continues her investigation and meets Kayden Cartwright, the creator of Siege, and gets his help looking for Chase and Sycorax, only to find an anomaly in the code that’s locking Cartwright out. And as the rest of the pilots plan their next steps (and almost get into an altercation with other Polity soldiers), the Union finally makes their big play to take over Japan.

OUR TAKE

Well, thanks to DC’s inconsistent and sudden release schedule that I can’t keep track of, we get to cover TWO half issues this time instead of one! They’re halves from two different issues, but they actually mesh together pretty well, more or less. And it means we have a lot more to talk about, though more from “hope:LESS” than “game:OVER”. The second half of the third issue really just adds Chase’s capture, effectively taking him out of the story for awhile (and likely not towards good things if the “Next: Julian Chase No More!” is any indication). The other notable part is that the rest of the team doesn’t believe Cammie’s story for…really no reason, since even Caliban’s lack of being able to respond at all seems like it would be at least somewhat concerning. So now Cammie is on a secret mission and keeping secrets from her teammates for…drama? Pointless drama at that. What happens when they find out she’s right? Do they apologize? Somehow I doubt it.

But yeah, the beginning of “hope:LESS” looks a lot more promising for a few reasons. First of which being that we learn more about Kazu’s background and heritage, which I’ve probably mentioned before as being bittersweet for me. I honestly wish we were learning these sorts of details about ALL the pilots so getting them at all is welcome, but we’re getting it in a comic that is not meant to be anything more than supplementary material, which means it might be redundant to explore these later in the story when this has already happened. Also feel I should point out that the Union has apparently existed since KAZU’S GRANDFATHER WAS A SOLDIER. Must be a pretty appealing faction if they’ve been able to stay relevant as a offensive force for multiple generations. Not to mention we get an (obscured) look at a HUMAN FACE associated with the group, meaning they aren’t just faceless goons and brainwashed AI as the show would seem to imply.

And yet even with these steps forward, we’re still not really any closer to understanding what the heck Sycorax is and how it relates to Chase, or how the heck the Japanese Polity’s giant robot works, or who the heck the guy in control of the Union forces around here is, or…frankly a lot of things that you would think would be super important. So, this comic series is gonna really have to pick up the pace here to feel worth it as a purchase, even as fans await the next season (or raise the money for HBO Max).