Gold Key: Alliance Still Forming After Three Issues

Dynamite's reimagining of the Gold Key heroes -- Magnus, Robot Fighter; Turok, Son of Stone; The Mighty Samson; Solar -- reaches its third chapter in GOLD KEY: ALLIANCE. And while there's not an alliance to be had as yet, as none of the characters has even met, let alone have been proven to co-exist in the same story universe, Phil Hester has still set up some interesting plots that are starting to make the separate adventure have a cohesion.

When Magnus hunts down the kidnapped Leeja, he has to battle past a giant android. During the battle, he begins to see himself as a robotic prize fighter in a ring, not an agent in a street fight. His reality returns to him just in time to find Leeja at the mercy of the Mekman -- but what was this vision about?

Similarly, as Turok chases after a person of interest who has gone on foot into the dinosaur preserve, he too has his reality supplanted. He's no longer riding a motorcycle but a dinosaur, and his bow has been replaced with a stone-tipped spear. Like Magnus, his vision is short-lived, but leaves him with questions. Fortunately, he has met up with the object of his pursuit, a man I can only surmise to be the missing Gold Key hero, the master of the occult, Doctor Spektor. Which means that whatever is happening to the other heroes, including Samson's displacement and even Solar's African adventure, must have a supernatural element behind it all.

It's taking seemingly forever for our team of cross-genre heroes to assemble (a team-up that puts me in mind of the Fisher-Price Imaginext Heroes animated adventures). We see a little of each hero in each issue, and that has an overall effect on the timing of the storytelling. It's three issues, and Magnus alone has experienced a couple of hours at most. The pace is fast, but it feels slower.

Brent Peeples artwork with Morgan Hickman doing the colors is stunning, and really brings the reader into the stories. It will be interesting to see how Peeples brings together these disparate genre characters into a unified scene.