"Kresh Course" Battlestar Galactica: Starbuck #2 (Maximum Press) Story: Rob Liefeld and Robert Napton Script: Robert Napton Art: Hector Gomez Cover: Rob Liefeld January 1996

Starbuck is captured by the Eastern Alliance.

Story Summary

To convince the captured Starbuck to give up his secrets, Commandant Kresh executes Joseph in front him. Later, a prisoner named Hicks makes contact with Starbuck and reveals he is the real Joseph, the other was protecting him. Joseph has a plan to help Starbuck escape with a message for Charlie Watts, which he does, but Joseph stays behind, intent on not escaping until all of his fellow prisoners can be freed as well.

Meanwhile, out in space, the fleet has fought off the Eastern Alliance destroyers for now, taking out 82 of them. The fleet is heading out of the Terran system, despite the loss of the missing Starbuck. Cassiopeia visits with Chameleon and tells him the bad news.

Starbuck delivers Joseph's message to Charlie Watts, a request for the resistance to launch a full scale assault against the prison labor camp the next night, during which Joseph plans to free his fellow inmates with help from sympathizers on the inside. Starbuck reluctantly agrees to allow himself to be recaptured so he can deliver the affirmative message to Joseph and also try to retrieve his transmitter to signal the Galactica.

Joseph helps Starbuck find his transmitter and the emergency signal is sent. The Galactica receives it and Commander Adama sends Blue Squadron to rescue him. But Commandant Leiter's armada of destroyers also detects the signal and he orders the fleet to Lunar 1 to destroy the prison camp and everyone in it before the Colonials can arrive.

CONTINUED IN BATTLESTAR GALACTICA: STARBUCK #3

Didja Know?

I gave this issue the title of "Kresh Course" as a play on the phrase "crash course" and the machinations of Commandant Kresh as warden of the prison camp.

Didja Notice? 

Having been captured by the Eastern Alliance, Starbuck tells himself he has to put on his best pyramid face and bluff his way through. "Pyramid face" is a reference to a "poker face" on Earth, i.e. wearing a blank expression during the playing of poker so as not to reveal the value of your hand of cards.

On page 5, panel 1, Commandant Kresh appears to be missing two of the "support struts" on his eye patch.

The message Joseph gives to Starbuck for delivery to Charlie is on a small cassette that appears very similar to an Earth microcassette, introduced by Olympus in 1969. Strangely, Charlie later refers to it as a "disk", which it obviously is not.

On page 15, panel 3, the off-panel Chameleon is speaking to Cassiopeia, but his word balloons are coming from two opposite directions! I guess he was pacing while talking!

Chameleon tells Cassie on page 15 that he once met a pyramid dealer on Leo who thought he was a splendid dancer. This is an in-joke to the fact that Chameleon was played by Fred Astaire in the episode "The Man With Nine Lives"; he was well-known for his dancing skills in musical films and on Broadway during his heyday of the 1930s-50s.

There's a nice couple of bits on page 17. First, one of the Alliance Enforcers refers to Starbuck as an "alien dog" and Starbuck asks him what a dog is; this makes sense since what we know of as "dogs" are referred to as "daggits" by the Colonials. Moments later, Starbuck delivers the message to Joseph that the resistance will make its diversionary strike "at 3 a.m., whatever that means." Obviously, the Colonials must use different terms to state the time of day.

On page 18, Starbuck says, "Now, wait a second." Shouldn't that be "wait a micron"?

On page 21, Blue Squadron is shown launching from the landing bay instead of through the launch chutes.