The Activity #11

Written by Nathan Edmondson
Art by Mitch Gerads

Since The Activity, Nathan Edmondson and Mitch Gerads's series about a special forces top-secret team of operatives, began, each issue has told the story of a single mission, while hints have been dropped that a larger story has been playing out involving a governmental leak which has possibly compromised the team.

With this issue, Edmondson finally pulls the trigger on that storyline.  The team is sent to Minneapolis to track down a terrorist cell which is planning to blow something in the city up.  They have next to nothing to go on, and so the issue is given over to some pretty unconventional methods of locating cell phones and explosives.  While this is going on, someone in the Pentagon gets final confirmation of where the leak is coming from, and begins to investigate how widely it reaches.

The storytelling in this issue is excellent, as Edmondson plots a taut thriller, as the team watch the clock run down on their window of opportunity.  One way to track C-12 explosives is with specially trained butterflies, which leads to some very cool visuals.

One could easily argue that the nameless and undeveloped terrorists are too easy a stand-in for a threat, but the story is not about their beef with America, or whatever their motivation is; terrorists are the go-to bad guys, and many other issues of this series have used more original villains and targets.

I'm happy to see that the leak aspect of the story is finally being explored, and am curious to see where this story is headed next.