LADY S. VOLUME 5 & VOLUME 6

PORTUGUESE MEDLEY | A SECOND OF ETERNITY
Artwork: Philippe Aymond | Colors: Sébastian Gérard | Script: Jean Van Hamme

LADY S. book 5 begins with our heroine, now going by her birth name of Shania following her exile from the United States in the last volume, working as an interpreter at the European Parliament. But we learn in short order that she's actually there as an agent of CATRIG, which she has finally joined full-time. Her true purpose in this role is to draw out a Farik, Hassine, a known terrorist spotted in the area. And she does so, thanks to her roommate hooking up with his friend, leading to a double-date for Shania and Farik.

But the plot thickens when Shania's long-thought-dead father, Abel Rivkas, apparently resurfaces at the United States embassy in Lisbon. Shania heads there immediately with Ralph Ellington, the CIA field agent-turned-archivist who has popped up in most of her adventures, to confirm her father's identity. But unknown to Shania, Farik hid a disc in her handbag during their date when he saw the police nearby, anticipating that his friend, who had slept with her roommate, would be able to later retrieve it.

So the terrorists head to Lisbon as well, on Shania's trail to recover the disc. But Shania finds it in her bag and turns it over to the authorities before her meeting with the man who, indeed, turns out to be her biological father. What follows is a relatively light-hearted (for the most part) Lady S. adventure, as the CIA, working in conjunction with CATRIG for a change, easily outwits the semi-incompetent terrorists. The best analogy I can come up with is that this one feels like an episode of 24, if 24 was a dramedy. In fact, the nice balance of comedy with intrigue may very well make this my favorite Lady S. story to date.

The story ends with CATRIG faking the death of Shania's father after he decides that he would rather remain in Europe, close to his daughter, rather than seek asylum in the United States. The final scene features Shania with both of her dads, as Abel is now living a peaceful life at Ambassador Fitzroy's villa.

Book 6 throws everything into dissaray even further than the past couple installments, beginning with Abel breaking his cover to appear at a scientific lecture in France, where he rants against the Soviet scientist who held him and several other researchers prisoner for years, passing their work off as his the entire time. This results in Abel's arrest. Shania teams up with her longtime partner Anton to try and clear her father, and is busted as well when she breaks into a house to do so. This means Shania is blackmailed into working for a French shadow organization in order to get both her father and herself off the hook.

What follows is a winding trail of crosses and double-crosses, faces from previous volumes, and more. It's a very engrossing read; probably the best "page-turner" in the LADY S. saga to date. I still think I like book 5 more for its lighter tone, but book 6 is very deftly plotted and possibly the most suspenseful of all Shania's stories. For the first time, I was genuinely wondering if the good guy would win without and major casualties.

That said, I do have two nits to pick: the first is simple, but a head-scratcher nonetheless. What was the point of setting up Abel with a faked death and new identity under which to lay low on the final page of volume 5, if the first pages of volume 6 were going to immediately undo that setup? You may have noticed that I get really dismayed when status quos are disrupted -- I've complained about it a lot in these LADY S. reviews, and this is just another instance of that. I like things to be familiar. I enjoy a James Bond movie more when Bond goes into M's office for a briefing at the beginning than when the mission is presented some other way. Likewise, in comics, when a setup has been established, I prefer to see the stories stick to it, or at least to not immediately discard it before its even had a chance to settle in!

And my second issue: where was CATRIG during this entire affair? Have Shania and Anton finally washed their hands of the group for good? Because if not, I find it odd that they would've step in when a pair of their best operatives are involved in such a high-profile case.

So that's it for LADY S., at least for now. Her saga isn't done, but our time with her is. There are a dozen books in the series, but at present only six have been translated into English (or at least, only six have made it to Comixology in the United States). And considering that volume 5 hit Comixology in 2016 with a note stating volume 6 was "coming soon" -- and volume 6 then released three years later in 2019, who know when (or if) we'll finally see the full series released in English?