"I give you riddles because I'm bored, Data. "What Lore Hath Wrought" is awfully boring, don't you think?"
Things are going great!
Lore War continues as we sink more into this messed up Loreverse, with occasional flashbacks and checks and balances to historical events and characters we are familiar with. As far as a plot goes, we're still trying to enact the plan Sisko some issues ago, which runs into complications.
Before I go forward, I gotta say Davide Tinto's art is a little funky in this one. Characters and their anatomy change widely between panels, and at least once I had to reread a page to make sure I understood who was doing what. Some shots are beautiful, but especially when there's a lot of characters on screen it can be a tad difficult to differentiate them.
Characters are falling into place as their respective missions go through ups and downs-- the most compelling core aside from Data and Lore, in my opinion, is Sisko, Beverly and Kahless right now. They bounce off each other really well, especially Kahless and Beverly, and their "Age of Apocalypse" designs are really fun.
Which, that's something that shouldn't be expected, also-- I don't like most designs in Age of Apocalypse or other stories that follow this exact structure. I don't even like most Mirror Universe designs. "Scrappy in an evil world" and "Evil version of a character" is a tough aesthetic to nail and, so far, all of these are winners. Shout-outs as well to fun explanations of where characters are and why, some of which actually get to be a lot more interesting than I was expecting.
It's a bit of a shame that Lore is by design not really interacting with characters that often, but it also serves to showcase how woefully unprepared for his own project he is. He keeps resetting reality over and over again and it just never fits, while making Data watch and have to see him crushing versions of his friends over and over again. And yet there is a piece of the old self in the new self every time-- things that always happen, people who always show up, events that must happen for there to be a galaxy worth keeping around.
I don't know if that's going to say anything about destiny, or fate, or free will, considering how much of Sisko's recent history has been about breaking the chains of expectations and generational trauma. But so far it's a fun, interesting enough romp that will probably end in a lot of explosions, and maybe a cat killing god.
Overall we're 2 issues in and this is shaping up to be a great finale for my all-time favorite set of Star Trek comics.
