Stargate: Insurrection #1

Posted on by phil.wrede
The cover for the first issue of ‘Stargate: Insurrection,’ showing our main characters (from left to right: Dr. Randall Stryker, Colonel William Stryker, Lt. Matt Wright, and Major Ellen Cooper) standing ready and visible through the Stargate. The text, “A toy comic by Phil Wrede,” is visible at the top of the image.
The title of this comic, “Step Into Liquid (Part 1),” is displayed over a photograph of Rocky Mountain National Park (though its caption says it’s Colorado Springs, Colorado). As the page progresses, we eventually approach the secure entrance at the Cheyenne Mountain facility that is historically the visual touchstone for Stargate Command. Text in caption bubbles continues to read, “The headquarters of Stargate Command. In its final days. It’s about to be shut down. For real, this time.”
Inside the complex, Richard Woolsey and General Jack O’Neal (“played” here by action figures of Robert Picardo and Pedro Pascal, respectively) walk through a hallway, lamenting the imminent death of the Stargate Program. A joke is told that mirrors a remark from the pilot of Stargate: SG-1; in the original Stargate film, Jack O’Neil’s name is spelled with one “L,” while in SG-1, it’s spelled “O’Neill” (the character was played by Kurt Russell in the movie, and Richard Dean Anderson on television). This character’s name is spelled differently, again (“O’Neal”), in acknowledgement of his second “recasting” as a Pedro Pascal action figure).
Woolsey and O’Neal meet Colonel William Stryker, whom it’s indicated through dialogue is going to lead the last-ever SGC mission through the Stargate before the program’s demise.
As Woolsey, O’Neal, and Stryker walk to the room housing the Stargate, we see a flashback to an adventure O’Neal and Stryker had on P3X-666 (which is meant to lead longtime Stargate fans to accept that the heretofore-unseen Colonel Stryker has been a member of SGC for as long as O’Neal).
All three men stare into the empty Stargate; it’s revealed through dialogue that SGC is being sold off to a company “co-owned by the president’s son-in-law,” which will now determine what kind of traffic goes through the Stargate across the universe. Neither O’Neal, nor Stryker, nor Woolsey are happy about this.
Their bemoaning concluded, they walk down some more corridors, to meet the rest of the last-ever SG team. They arrive at the M.E.L.P. lab (whereas, in SG-1 and Atlantis, there were remote-controlled robotic units called M.A.L.P.s - Mobile Analytic Laboratory Probe - this mission will test the M.E.L.P. - Mobile Exploration & Lethal force Platform), where Colonel Stryker’s son, Dr. Randall Stryker, is interacting with his invention.
It becomes clear that Randall doesn’t know he’s supposed to come on the mission. Woolsey nearly lets the proverbial cat out of the back, but O’Neal shuts him up.
Stryker breaks the good news to his son.
Father and son Strykers embrace. It’s revealed in dialogue that Dr. Randall Stryker is the first-ever tenured professor of what O’Neal calls “gate-ology” (though, Randall prefers the name, “gate studies”).
The four men continue on down yet another hallway, which opens up into a bright room where the other two members of this day’s SG team are talking. O’Neal says they’ve been on “nearly a thousand missions,” so they should be perfectly prepared to escort the aged Colonel and his lab rat son to an alien world (one that has been visited many times, and deemed free from danger).
Major Ellen Cooper and Lt. Matt Wright salute their superior officers as they approach. Randall tries to chime in, and he’s immediately cut off by Wright.
As Cooper and Wright continue to razz Randall, O’Neal quietly guides them to realize that O’Neal and Randall are related.
At the news that they’ll be escorting a father and son expedition, Cooper and Wright seem concerned that they’re doing this only for PR. Stryker and Woolsey explain to them that, in fact, this mission is more than a little off the books.
As Randall starts to explain the M.E.L.P. to everybody, Sgt. Lous Jones (who we’ll soon learn operates the Stargate) comes running in. After he catches his breath, he declares that the shutdown team has already arrived at Cheyenne Mountain, and has ordered him to suspend gate operations.
Soldiers from the shutdown team advance on the SGC guards, their weapons drawn. O’Neal asks the team members if they still want to proceed with their mission, and they all agree.
The SG team runs down the hallway to the gate room, just as the shutdown team soldiers are let inside. Jones sits in front of his computer, and begins to dial the address for P3A-575.
Another shutdown team soldier penetrates the central processing room, announcing over the walkie talkie that he’s going to shut things down. O’Neal stands outside the Embarkation Room, preventing shutdown soldiers from entering. Jones has nearly finished dialing the gate.
As Jones finishes locking the last chevron, the soldier in central processing starts to break the computers running the SGC.
The chevrons immediately disappear from the physical Stargate; Jones starts seeing error messages on his computer screen. He tries to contact the team, just as they start to move to the event horizon. The soldiers facing O’Neal stick their guns in his face.
Soldiers breach the Embarkation Room’s door and arrest Jones; the team crosses the Stargate.
Woolsey’s ushered into the Embarkation Room; O’Neal and Jones start explaining to him what’s happened. Meanwhile, the SG team emerges from the other end of the gate, declaring that it doesn’t look like P3A-575. Wright says that it looks familiar; this remark is a roundabout joke for me, because the background of the panel is a photo I took on vacation in Canada, where many episodes of SG-1 and Atlantis were filmed (although, this photo was taken outside of Jasper, instead of Vancouver).
The team fans out, in search of the DHD (the “Dial Home Device,” which is used to operate the Stargate), assuming they can still abort the mission like usual, and return to Earth. We’ll have to wait for the next issue, to see if they actually can do that.
The credits for the comic strip, citing the Unsplash users whose photographs were the background art (as well as the U.S. National Archives), the use of fonts by Blambot, the creators of the Stargate film, and the SG-1/Atlantis TV series, the ownership of the Stargate IP by Amazon Studios, the use of stock visual effects by Action VFX, and that the figure (and certain background) photography/script/lettering were by me, Phil Wrede.

I came to enjoy Stargate later than the other “Star” franchises (to crib a phrase from The Simpsons’ Comic Book Guy); I’ve never been a big fan of the movie, and when SG-1 moved from Showtime to the Sci-Fi Channel, I was about to start college, so I had plenty of other demands on the available space in my brain.

The only memory I have of SG-1 (aside from that same episode of The Simpsons, which is also the one where Comic Book Guy coined another phrase I adore: “What in the name of Steve Ditko?”) pre-2015 is from a sick day I took in college, that I spent flipping through the channels on the TV my roommates and I shared in the living room. I remember seeing Ernie Hudson’s face and immediately stopping my channel scanning. I didn’t know what was going on in the show (it was a season 9 episode of SG-1 – “Ethon”), but I’ll watch almost anything with Ernie Hudson in it, at least for a little while.

My wife gets all the credit for my becoming a Stargate fan. I got to share my love for Star Trek with her, and she got to share Stargate with me. We were multiple seasons into watching SG-1, and I stumbled across a meme one day that helped me realize what’s most impactful to me about the show:

Well, this meme, and “Window of Opportunity.” I’m a sucker for a good time loop episode, and SG-1 produced one of the best.

I’ve loved Star Wars and Star Trek for about as long as I can remember. Coming to Stargate as an adult, with all my sci-fi/TV/movie/media baggage, has given me opportunities to critically examine what I like, and why, in the kinds of stories I enjoy in ways that I often don’t think about when I’m watching a classic episode of TNG that I love, or flashing back to scenes from Empire Strikes Back while listening to the soundtrack for the millionth time.

I waffle back and forth on whether I like SG-1 or Atlantis best. Atlantis is free of the most of the obnoxious “ancient aliens” baggage that infected the movie (and, consequently, SG-1), and features my very favorite character in the franchise (Ronon Dex*), but it’s often hobbled by some of the most stunningly weird, nonsensical decisions a sci-fi show has ever made (at least, one not executive produced by Rick Berman and Brannon Braga). SG-1 has a fantastic main cast, and tells some classic sci-fi stories in their own fun way, but is also impacted tremendously by the shuffling around of that main cast, and the grody “ancient aliens” stuff just gets more difficult to tolerate with every passing year.

Watching SG-1 did help me decide that, from where I sit, Richard Dean Anderson is the best TV star that American broadcast TV ever produced. That realization helped me understand why I enjoy the kinds of things I enjoy a little more clearly, and I always appreciate some pop-culture-inspired-self-reflection. I think Pedro Pascal has a lot of similar qualities to Richard Dean Anderson, and that’s why I elected to “recast” the part of Jack O’Neil/O’Neill/O’Neal with him.

I know that in this age and day, especially, it’s not a surprise when the studios that hold the rights to a wonderful property let it whither on the vine (Coyote Vs. Acme, anybody?), but even so, it’s still amazing that MGM/Amazon hasn’t put out a new Stargate show since SGU ended in 2011. I know there’ve been web series, and video games, novels, and other things, but Stargate, much like Star Trek, has proven that its first, best destiny is on the small screen.

Even though it’s not a TV show, I hope that Stargate: Insurrection helps to fill the gaping void of new Stargate stories in the world. As an idea, it’s required more careful nurturing than any other I’ve had since I’ve started my toy comics project, but as a result, I think I have a road map for it that will sustain it, and me, over the long term. This story marks the end of the first year of my new comics-making strategy, of trying to put out one issue-length story a month, instead of haphazardly churning out a smaller story every week, and creatively speaking, I think this strategy is paying off! I’ve been pretty pleased (or better) with every comic I’ve put out this year. Realizing that there are more (and more interesting) ways to lay out pages than the simple grids I’ve been using for years has definitely increased my confidence in my visual imagination, too.

Whether or not you’re a Stargate fan, I hope this first installment a satisfying read, and that you’ll want to come back for the next issue! Thanks for reading!

*If you are a Stargate enthusiast, are you (like me) a little sad that Jason Momoa hadn’t strongarmed the studio into making some more Stargate? With or without Ronon, I’m hopeful that the new show on Amazon can deliver the goods, and entice new legions of viewers to get enthusiastic about the series!

3 thoughts on “Stargate: Insurrection #1”

  1. Great first issue. I too came to Stargate late and watched SG-1 on DVD when I worked at a video store. I’d love to see a reboot or a continuation. Maybe the gate has been in mothballs for awhile…

    Reply

    1. Thanks, man! I’m excited to see what the new series has in store for us, but until then, hopefully, I can slake some of our collective Stargate thirst here…

      Reply
  2. Pingback: Stargate: Insurrection #2 – PizzaRat dot Net

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