Review: A Plot-Heavy ‘Destro’ #4 Makes For The ‘Worst’ Issue Yet
by Austin Gorton
Overview
The penultimate issue of the series has some narrative business to complete and suffers — relatively — for it. But Destro continues to swagger, even as the ground begins to slip out from under him, and that keeps Destro #4 entertaining.
Overall
7/10As the penultimate issue of the series, Destro #4 is, understandably, the most plot-heavy issue of the series yet. Ahead of the finale, plotlines need to come together, characters moved into place. Yet in and amongst that necessary business, the issue doesn’t fully abandon its portrayal of Destro as a man destined to fail, making it of a piece with preceding issues even if it’s a bit more workmanlike.
The issue opens some time after the events of the preceding issue. Destro has been off-the-board long enough for the Crimson Twins to presume him dead, prompting them to make a move on MARS Industries. In the process, they learn the secret of the BATS — that they can’t tell friend from foe, limiting their effectiveness when deployed en masse (curious, the secret of Energon remains hidden from them). At the same time, Destro emerges from the shadows of the US military to make his move on Astoria Carlton-Ritz, crashing one of her parties rocking a bomb ass fur-trimmed coat and deep-v shirt. Destro is putting the pieces of the attack from issue #1 together, and learns the identity of both Chameleon and the details of Project Overkill.
Everything about this sequence presents Destro as in complete control of the situation. Artist Andre Bressan makes Destro move through Astoria’s club with swagger. Writer Dan Watters plots the ensuing confrontation such that Destro is always a step ahead, anticipating each move and maintaining the upper hand. Even when he learns the truth about Project Overkill, the mastermind behind the plot that brought him to his previous lowest point, his response is not rage or triumphant, but the simple exclamation of, “fascinating”.
The tension between that sequence and the Crimson Twins actions in Destro #4 is the tension of the series in microcosm. On the one hand, Destro is emerging from his lowest point in the series — hunted and targeted for death, forced to surrender himself to the United States to survive — triumphant. He’s leveraged the necessity of his arms to the US into intelligence and freedom. He uses this to take command of the narrative with a sartorial splash, exposing the plot against him.
Yet at the same time, seemingly unbeknownst to him, he is losing control of his company and his puppet state of Darklonia to Xamot and Tomax. He’s won the narrative but risks losing the war in the process. Watching Destro untangle the conspiracy against him while the Crimson Twins are taking MARS meetings in his name is electric.
As crackling as that tension is, there’s no denying this is an issue with a lot of exposition and plot movements. Waters and Bressan do their best to liven up the confrontation between Destro and Astoria, but it’s still functionally an infodump. The Crimson Twins are less the drivers of action in their plotline than they are witnesses to it, with their actual acquisition of MARS — a big deal in the universe of the story — happening off-panel and requiring little of the panache that usually characterizes them. That’s enough to make Destro #4 a tick or two less successful than previous entries, but it’s still entertaining enough as it steams the series into its endgame.
