Somewhere in his past, between our time and the time of this issue, Gilad Anni-Padda evidently decided to cut down on his responsibilities, but the universe isn’t going to stand for that. Having somewhat inadvertently ended up as king of a small city, Gilad discovered that his new subjects were working near an unshielded nuclear reactor. Now, in Eternal Warrior #7, he is leading his new people off in search of a cure for radiation sickness for them, and, most importantly, also for his granddaughter Caroline who is not, after all, immortal.
Caroline remains the odd person out in these tales. The last person we saw Gilad interacting with was his daughter, already a fully-trained warrior and someone he taught to hunt early on. Here, he is raising another young girl, someone still innocent enough to make friends with mechanical wolves once they stop attacking. Yet, she’s also entirely in favor of killing the king who ordered the nuclear robots, once they find him. Will she grow up like her aunt? Or has Gilad changed at all in the centuries? In any case, Caroline gives us, the readers, someone specific to care about in the future wilderness. At the same time, a cute, bloodthirsty seven-or-so year old is a bit creepy.
This issue also reintroduces the death cult, bringing up the likelihood that Gilad’s godkiller status will once again come into play, ultimately revealing what happened between the end of the last ark (Eternal Warrior #4 ) and the beginning of this arc in Eternal Warrior #5. It has been two thousand years, after all, and Gilad has seen every one of them, going from lone warrior to emperor to village chieftain to—what? It promises to be a complex tale, with many twists and turns. The only trouble with a future story this complex is there is the ever-present threat of the reset button. One hopes Pak will not resort to this, or that he will at least have a clever way of handling the rewind if he does.
Robert Gill keeps the layout clean and clear with the focus on the action and actors save on the rare occasions where Gilad is actually discussing the scenery. Then, and only then, does he detail the background, showing the idyllic land Gilad dreams of. Then the wolves attack, and the focus is back on the foreground action.
Eternal Warrior is a gripping, unpredictable read.