Issue(s): Nomad #9
Cover Date: Jan 93
Title: "The flow"
Credits:
Fabian Nicieza - Writer
Pat Olliffe - Penciler
Mark McKenna - Inker
Glenn Herdling - Editor

Review/plot:
We saw last issue that someone was killing members of the Undergrounders (a loose connection of people from society's underclass that have helped Nomad and vice versa). Nomad learns from his Undergrounder friends Legs and Horizon that the Undergrounders owe money to an organization known as Pipeline, and that's why the assassin is hunting them. They ask Nomad to kill the assassin, but Nomad doesn't kill (anymore). However, he does try to find Ebbtide, and develops quite a tan doing so.

And he does eventually meet the assassin, Ebbtide.

Nomad goes back to Pipeline. He doesn't want to fight Ebbtide for them.

But he ultimately does.

Nomad tries to negotiate a ceasefire between the Pipeline and the Undergrounders, but Ebbtide isn't interested and Nomad is forced to kill him.

Nomad is forced to leave Los Angeles after this, and this is the last we'll see of Horizon and Legs. But Horizon gives Nomad a card that will connect him with Undergrounders in other cities.

Frankly, the conflict between the Pipeline and the Undergrounders is nearly incomprehensible to me. I can understand the Undergrounders as a background thing, to give Nomad some connections as he travels. But the characters and the concept aren't really all that developed, and they didn't really need to be as long as they never became the main plot. But that's what happens here. And yet it seems half-heartedly done. I don't really understand what the Pipeline is, and if we find out exactly how the Undergrounders cheated them, i skimmed over it. There's a basic idea here about Nomad getting mixed up with one unsavory group and helping them just because he's loyal to them, but it doesn't really come across if that's meant to be the conflict.

This book can actually be pretty good when it's about Nomad wandering from city to city dealing with random "torn from the headlines" plots, but this issue misfires when it tries to focus on the background characters without having developed them.

Also in this issue, we see Giscard Epurer track down Julia's mother. Who, since she is unnamed, i am forced to track as "Baby Bucky's Mom".

Quality Rating: D

Historical Significance Rating: 1

Chronological Placement Considerations: At least three weeks pass during the course of this issue.

References: N/A

Crossover: N/A

Continuity Insert? N

My Reprint: N/A