While writing issues #5 and #6, it became obvious that #5 would finish off the Tom Clancy Radioactive Terrorist Thriller Plot, and #6 would focus on the Ellard threat. So I needed to start thinking, a while before writing this, of how I could revisit Ellard’s actions — which I hadn’t started writing as villainous, because I didn’t know he was the villain when I was writing #2.
Always plot out the whole comic first. If it’s an ongoing, plot out the damn arc. Grraahh!!
At least Ellard gets to throw in some of the Big Deadies Ideas Roy and I had been tinkering with back in the day. Not one of my damnable montage sequences, but he rattles off some neat ideas about where this series could have gone, if it went.
At any rate, as mentioned earlier in this blog, Ellard had been gaming me as much as the main characters, because in retrospect it was very easy to see how he’d been manipulating events. John gets into the hoary details in the above page from the comic, but Ellard has been working towards this from the beginning; the only mistake he’s made to date was not thinking John would find the guts to start pushing harder to figure out what Ellard was up to.
That’s it, really.
To my credit, as I strive to make sense of all this, it really is the visit to Jane that moves the whole plot of the book. John visits Jane, Jane gives him essentially an ultimatum: quit, or forget about your family. John goes back and starts pushing hard to wrap up his Returner dossier, harder than he ever would have left to his own devices. And that pushing gets Blakeney to investigate the basement, which reveals Fulci, which brings us to here.
So there is a character-driven, emotional through line here. Honest!
Oh — the Kyle Baker revelation that made it clear how to end this without Ellard winning and the virus getting released? Tomorrow.
How do we make phone calls dramatic? With DRAMATIC PHONE ANGLES! I got nothin'.
PANEL ONE
Ellard casts a glance down at Fulci's body.
ELLARD
Died about five minutes ago. The way he's been ... tinkering, I'm surprised it took so long.
JOHN (phone)
You've been playing all of us this whole time, haven't you?
PANEL TWO
John's on the phone on the other side of the door, surrounded by dead soldiers, his hand on the door to the lab. Almost a McCoy/Spock thing.
JOHN
The first time we met. Your men didn't miss Taylor. He didn't escape. You let him go, and you bought him time. To have a “threat” to control.
PANEL THREE
Ellard, on the other side of the door.
ELLARD
The Major was competent, John. Taylor was crazy enough to be scary, but too stupid to be dangerous. Just what I needed.
JOHN (phone)
So you bought him enough time to convince the public Returners were dangerous. He could have killed everyone in Boston.
ELLARD
He didn't. And if he had, you'd all be back in the camps.
PANEL FOUR
John is walking back down the corridor, past Harvey.
ELLARD (phone)
That would have been worth it.
JOHN
Button-pushing, all of it. Taylor, your scarecrow. The camps, a pressure cooker to push us over the edge.
JOHN (2)
You had to make us a credible threat. Before exterminating us.
PANEL FIVE
Ellard is examining Fulci's body.
ELLARD
There were too many of you to stay covert, John. And you have to be killed. This has to stop.
JOHN (phone)
What has to stop?
PANEL SIX
ELLARD
All of this. People that don't die, legacies that never end. Returner armies. The Chinese are drafting Returners, did you know that?
PANEL SEVEN
John's in the corridor, and Returners with heavy equipment on their backs (acetylene torches and plate steel) are moving past him.
ELLARD (phone)
Millions of unkillable soldiers. Not a bad idea. But here... you've got rights. Jobs. Lawyers.
