The Activity #7

Written by Nathan Edmondson
Art by Mitch Gerads

The Activty, Edmondson and Gerads's military black ops comic, has been criticized for being too TV, and for not building up its characters, as each issue has shown a done-in-one mission.  That all changes with this issue, which launches a multi-part story arc called The Goat, and which gives at least one of the team members a private life (at least for a little while).

The comic opens with a team infiltrating a cargo vessel, and while searching it, finding a known terrorist from Yemen.  He ends up giving some important information about an earlier Team Omaha mission to his interrogators, and soon our team is off to Uzbekistan to make their target, known as 'The Goat', want to come over to the American side. 

The team employs a number of psy ops techniques to turn him, including having him wake up in his own bed to find a number of laser targets playing across his body.  There is a bit of humour to this issue, as Team Omaha finally have a mission that doesn't fall apart on them (at least so far), and doesn't have anyone shooting at them.

Back home, one of the team, code-named Bookstore, is told that she has to end her relationship with her boyfriend, but is not given a reason as to why.  I assume this will be picked up upon again.

Edmondson's writing here is sharp, as is Gerads's art.  I've enjoyed this series from its beginning, but am happy to see that something larger is taking place.  I wonder if this storyline is going to be the one that addresses some of the clues that Edmondson has been dropping about the team's future.