Another catastrophe and another interjection from the Steward, but this time there's something far more sinister about the disaster waiting to happen. Days Missing launches into the modern era as the Steward must prevent the destruction of Apollo 11.
Long Version
The Steward sits outside the fence waiting for the launch of Apollo 13 with a large crowd that is there for the same reason. After taking off a hundred feet or so, the ship experiences problems and comes crashing down towards the crowd. The Steward stands in the space craft's way and stops time. He then folds the moment back upon itself several hours before the shuttles launch. He must now figure out what he hasn't accounted for to make sure the mission is a success. In his personal library he looks through a view finder of the events running off a list of variables he accounted for. He reaches one conclusion: Kestus as he spots her with the view finder. Karen Kestus, as she's now known by, becomes aware of the presence of the Steward. She is in a very important position for the launch as everything has been routed through her terminal before anyone else's. The meeting that she is in is a last minute security meeting to ensure that the launch goes off perfectly. The man in charge makes it clear that this mission needs to succeed or NASA will be shut down. We follow Kestus as she is greeted by one of the new security officers brought on as extra protection. She spills some sugar and writes a math equation in the mess. As the security officer looks at the equation he is awakened as a sleeper agent from Russia. Kestus has written a program that with disable to boosters to the shuttle. The sleeper agent will disable the manual override on the shuttle so that nothing can stop the shuttle from crashing. That is until the Steward shows up. This issue really flushes out Kestus' character and further develops the butting relationship between her and the Steward. It all comes down to two warring philosophies. The Stewards sees where humanity is going and is making sure the proper steps are taking to get them to their greatness, while Kestus sees them as horrible creatures that fall into the same vicious cycle no matter what century they are in. She wants to see them confined to only one planet instead of reaching out and destroying more. Phil Hester once again does an amazing job with these two characters. Even though they don't agree on the human race and are trying to achieve two completely different results for this major event, they still really care about each other. Perhaps it's the sense of kindred souls that they share, but never does their interactions with one another feel forced or misplaced. Kestus literally goes hundreds of years between visits with the Steward, but doesn't miss a beat or waste time when she's with him. Something Hester does quite well is keeping the story bounded in reality. When the Steward uses his time traveling powers it is kept to a minimal and used very realistically. It's a nice touch in the world of comics. The art continues to be a strong element of the story. David Marquez captures the late 60's perfectly with the characters clothing, their haircuts and does a great job of conveying the attitude of the characters with their facial expressions. He's drawn three very different issues now and each one is consistently great. As I said in the last review it's important to be able to spot Kestus instantly in the story. This time they give you a bit of a freebie as the Stewards points her out, but I have to say that she would have been recognizable even without that scene. If you're late to reading this series then shame on you because this is a top notch book that has everything going for it. It has amazing covers, a great writer and story and finally fantastic and consistent art. Granted the Sci-fi element may initially turn people off, but it's so secondary to what the creative team is achieving to the story that it almost becomes irrelevant and very secondary to the story. This series has been so good that it's made me want to read the previous volume of Days Missing as a result. If you've been enjoying the series then much like me you will be anxiously awaiting the next issue. Overall Score – 9.4/10
We follow Kestus as she is greeted by one of the new security officers brought on as extra protection. She spills some sugar and writes a math equation in the mess. As the security officer looks at the equation he is awakened as a sleeper agent from Russia. Kestus has written a program that with disable to boosters to the shuttle. The sleeper agent will disable the manual override on the shuttle so that nothing can stop the shuttle from crashing. That is until the Steward shows up.