The deep space mining colony had been using T-Space to dump their waste. They didn’t count on anyone being all that concerned about it until it turned out that a hyper-intelligent life form just happened to live in T-Space. This explains the hostility that a certain group of soldiers are running into in The Forged #3. The writing team of Greg Rucka and Eric Trautmann conclude the opening arc in a deeply enjoyable story that is deployed to the page courtesy of artist Mike Henderson and colorist Nolan Woodard. With the full conflict well in view, the creative team escalates things beautifully.  

The planet Gehenna D-54-C is a mess. A group of Forged soldiers has become the target for a mass of hostile life forms that seem totally bent on destroying them. The threat from the alien life forms is complicated when it becomes apparent that the life forms in question are intelligent. The Eternal Empire has managed to make it 10,000 years without running into another intelligent alien race. The first big hello to another intelligence had not made the best first impression. The only thing that stands between the Eternal Empire and total annihilation is a group of soldiers aided by a very clever woman with very precise precognition. 

Rucka and Trautmann brilliantly balance military action against sci-fi drama. It’s truly rare when a story can completely engage as both a drama and an action story. Rucka and Trautmann are keeping enough units on the field of battle to keep everything interesting from cover to cover. Even the military procedural dialogue marches across the page with a great deal of wit. The pacing of the story feels more or less perfect, aided as it is by the presence of a precog who knows the immediate future down to the last second. 

Henderson walks a fine line between the horror of the aliens and the beauty of the setting. Woodard’s colors create a deliciously atmospheric Gehenna D-54-C. The mining colony is well-designed, with some degree of thought as to how it would have operated before the alien invasion. The powered armor of the team doesn’t look a whole lot different from sci-fi military powered armor that’s been plodding its way through action games and movies for decades now, but Henderson gives the walking tanks a kind of charm on the page that feels pleasantly expressive as the team works its way through the progressive hazards of another issue. 

Highly trained, star-faring, high-powered military personnel have been fighting strange armies of inhuman ETs since Heinlein’s 1959 novel Starship Troopers...and likely before that in some of the earliest pulp sci-fi stories. Contemporary adaptations have ranged from Games Workshop’s graphically brilliant, highly successful Warhammer 40,000 tabletop war game (from 1987) to James Cameron’s hilariously bad 1986 movie Aliens. With Forged, Rucka and Trautmann have perfected the precise blend of humor, action, and horror. It has been a hugely satisfying comic book iteration of the space marines vs. hordes of alien monsters sub-genre.

Grade: A