Stargate: Insurrection #6 – PizzaRat dot Net

The cover to the sixth issue of my Stargate toy comic series, ‘Stargate: Insurrection.’ In it, Nemesis’ spaceship (which, truthfully, is a toy of the flying Batmobile from Batman Beyond) races through a Stargate ring floating quietly in outer space. The text, “A toy comic by Phil Wrede,” is visible at the bottom of the image.

A page devoted to summarizing the events of the last four issues (this will get more difficult as the series continues, I fear). The text reads, “The new presidential administration has Stargate Command in its sights! Its ‘shutdown team’ has been deployed to take all staff into custody and turn its assets over to a for-profit entity. General Jack O’Neal and his colleagues have been impressed into repairing the damage done by shutdown team director, billionaire scion Alexander Weir! All hope is not lost - General Samantha Carter and Ronon Dex are leading some resistance inside SGC! The last free Stargate team was lost somewhere in the universe when Weir’s staff broke the Earth gate! Colonel William Stryker has lost one soldier already, but made a new friend in Anthony Cage. Now, though, they find themselves at the mercy of a woman called Nemesis…”

On the Eldritch planet, somewhere in the universe (probably), Nemesis watches closely as Dr. Randall Stryker, Major Ellen Cooper, Anthony Cage, and Colonel William Stryker try to repair her grounded spaceship without harvesting parts from their M.E.L.P. (Mobile Exploration & Lethal force Platform). Randall and Nemesis trade argumentative remarks.

Nemesis advances on Randall while he stands up, but Cage gets in between Randall and Nemesis before their conversation can escalate any further.

Cage tries to appeal to Nemesis’ rationality, but she won’t hear of it. She has assessed him and the SG team, and sees no value in them besides their labor.

As the situation beside the inoperative space ship continues to deteriorate, we return to the action at Stargate Command, where Alexander Weir (“played” here by an action figure of Walton Goggins) refuses to submit to the recently-arrived General Samantha Carter.

Elsewhere in the facility, Ronon Dex and Richard Woolsey (“played” here by action figures of Jason Momoa and Robert Picardo) fight their way through the halls, while Weir and Carter argue and mock one another.

In the embarkation room, General Jack O’Neal (“played” by an action figure of Pedro Pascal) fights back against his own shutdown team guard. Carter tries to explain the values that led her and her friends to spend their lives at Stargate Command, but Weir just doesn’t care.

On the Eldritch planet, Colonel Stryker and Cooper see an opening and rush Nemesis, barely ducking out of the way of her gunfire.

Cooper and Stryker each grab one of Nemesis’ arms, making her point her pistols into the air. Cage strongly encourages Randall to join in the fray.

A soldier breaks into the control room where Carter and Weir have been facing off, and while Carter is distracted, Weir pulls out a new kind of Zat gun and fires it on her, temporarily incapacitating her. The newly arrived soldier holds Sgt. Louis Jones at gunpoint.

Weir tells his soldier to keep Carter and Jones under control, which the soldier apparently takes to mean kill Jones, and then leave the room. He fires a burst of bullets into Jones’ chest.

After getting a brief, inspiring speech from Cage, Randall leaps at Nemesis, taking her down at her ankles.

Carter climbs back to her feet, well-practiced at shaking off the effects of a Zat gun, and despairs at seeing Jones’ lifeless body. O’Neal has met up with Ronon and Woolsey, who are all three making their way through SGC.

The SG team stands over Nemesis as she awakens; they’ve retrieved their weapons from wherever she placed them. The team tries, again, to explain to her that they are not her enemy.

Randall proposes finishing repairs on Nemesis’ ship, and then one of them flies it out of the planet’s atmosphere, to try and figure out where they are in the universe. Cage offers to hold Nemesis at gunpoint, to make sure she doesn’t interfere.

O’Neal, Ronon, and Woolsey finally find Carter in the labyrinthine corridors of SGC.

After a light moment celebrating their reunion, O’Neal also spots Jones’ corpse, and uses the sad discovery to reaffirm his commitment to kicking Weir and the shutdown team out!

The Strykers work on repairing Nemesis’ ship, while Cooper familiarizes herself with its controls.

Cooper gets the ship working, and Randall explains to her that the ship’s sensors should be able to record the stars in the sky after she gets out of the atmosphere (so then they can analyze them, and hopefully use the patterns to determine their location).

Nemesis demands Cooper take care of her ship, before the craft blasts into the sky.

Cooper narrates what she’s seeing to Stryker as she breaks atmosphere, and she’s dismayed to report that she sees no stars at all in the black space surrounding the planet!

The credits for the comic, citing the Unsplash users whose photographs were the background art (as well as the U.S. National Archives and NASA/JPL), 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.

Well, one of our heroes finally made it into the space surrounding the Eldritch planet, only to find… a whole lot of nothing! Admittedly, most of outer space is nothing (at least, as I remember learning about it), but there aren’t even little pinpricks of light that form patterns which could be compared to existing star charts. What do you suppose is the deal with that, reader??

Speaking of questions, where do you think Weir had been hiding that gigantic “new” Zat gun of his, prior to him whipping it out? What other tricky devices do you think he might have up his sleeve (or in his pockets)?

Let’s take a moment to honor the memory of Sergeant Louis Jones (whose first name pays tribute to Peter, David, Michael, and Dom DeLuise – a family whom made significant and timeless contributions to Stargate – and his last name, to the man who brought Walter Harriman to life, Gary Jones). You died to prove how serious the situation was, Jones, and for that I thank you, and I am sorry.

This issue marks the conclusion of the second “episode” in the first season of Stargate: Insurrection (which means the 2-part premiere is complete!). Just as we’re building up momentum, and leaving you with an exciting (hopefully) mystery this month, next month will bring… a different story. It’ll be a non-Stargate story, in fact! It’s another comic I’ve been working on in bits and pieces for most of the year, and I’m really excited to share it. It’s new, but it’s also a return to comics I haven’t made for a while.

Now that you’re properly forewarned about next month, it seems only right to offer you the chance to hop backwards in time, on the off-chance this is your first visit to Pizzarat.net (if it is, welcome!). This is the sixth issue in my Stargate toy comic series, so if this is the first one you’ve read, I hope you’re enthused to read the other ones to catch up:

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