"Armistice" Battlestar Galactica: Origins #5 (Dynamite) Pages 11-22 Writer: Robert Place Napton Pencils: Jonathan Lau 2008

After the end of the first Cylon War, Lt. Adama is assigned to a special task force.

Read the story summary of this issue at the Battlestar Wiki

Notes from the BSG chronology

This story opens on the last day of the first Cylon War, day 4,571, placing it after "The Lab".

Didja Know?

Battlestar Galactica: Origins was an 11-issue mini-series published by Dynamite Entertainment, covering the origins of several characters of BSG2000. Issues 5-8 featured a young William "Husker" Adama during the first Cylon War and its aftermath.

I've broken this issue into two stories since pages 1-10 place about 6 months before "The Lab" ("Stealth Mission"). The second half of the issue is our current study and opens immediately after "The Lab".

Characters appearing in this story

Lt. Bill Adama
Banzai (Lt. Stuart Bachanal)
Lt. Jaycie McGavin (flashback)
Cavendish (mentioned only)
Galactica commander (unnamed, possibly Commander Nash)
Annihilators (Cylon suicide cells)
Prisoners on the unnamed ice planet (flashback)
Admiral Jennings (mentioned only)
Lucky (flashback)
Captain Alexa Cain
Slapshot (a Viper pilot)
Joseph Adama (mentioned only)

Didja Notice?

As the story opens on page 11, Adama is disturbed by his failure to perform a mercy killing on Lucky six months earlier (in "Stealth Mission"). This is because he has just seen examples of what the Cylons have been doing with captured prisoners on the ice planet (and probably elsewhere) in "The Lab".

On page 12, Adama talks to Banzai. Banzai previously appeared in "The Lab".

Page 12, panels 2 and 4 are flashbacks of Jaycie from "The Lab". Here, it's revealed that she died from the injuries she suffered early in "The Lab".

On page 13, Adama tells the Galactica commander he doesn't drink, but the commander tells him to start. Adama is known to drink on occasion in later stories.

The commander of the Galactica here goes unnamed. Possibly, it would still be Commander Nash, introduced in Blood and Chrome, set about two years earlier, but the character drawn here looks dissimilar (of course, the comic was published years before actor Brian Markinson was cast as Nash for Blood and Chrome).

On page 13, panel 5, what looks like a globe can be seen in the background in the commander's quarters. Possibly, it is a globe of Caprica since the Galactica is that colony's representative battlestar in the Colonial fleet. In the same panel, a painting of a sailing ship similar to a galleon is seen on the wall.

The commander congratulates Adama on his commendation for his first Cylon kill on his first combat mission. This refers to events in "The Lab". But then the commander goes on to say that it may have been Adama's first combat mission of record, but he's had Cylons on his tail before and mentions the god Argus, known as the watchman. He is obliquely referring to the secret stealth battlestar Argus on which Adama served for a secret mission, as detailed in "Stealth Mission". Of course, he also dealt with Cylons two years earlier in Blood and Chrome, again, a retroactive continuity story released years after this comic was published.

This story introduces the concept of Annihilators, suicide cells of Cylon centurions programmed to act independently of command and strike at random Colonial targets. Even now that the armistice has been signed, Cylon command has no means of recalling them. The Galactica is assigned to hunting down and destroying these cells by Admiral Jennings.

Page 15, panel 5 is a flashback to the prisoners Adama found in a locked cell and was forced to leave behind near the end of "The Lab".

The commander warns Adama that the new CAG has the fleet record for combat kills and she won't like it if a nugget gives her a run for her money. CAG stands for Commander, Air Group; the term is also used in the U.S. Navy. "Nugget" is Colonial military slang for a pilot trainee; though Adama is years past being a trainee, the commander is probably implying that the new CAG will think of him that way; she even calls him nugget after he fails to "kill" her in a combat evaluation flight.

The new CAG is Captain Alexa Cain, call sign Pugnacious. She is revealed in "The Hard Six" to be the mother of Helena Cain, who later is seen to have become an admiral in the Colonial military in episodes of the TV series. However, in "Razor", Helena Cain's mother is said to be Saundra Cain, who died during the Battle of Tauron, one of the last battles of the first Cylon War and no mention of an Alexa is made. For continuity's sake, we could possibly imagine that Alexa is Saundra Cain's sister and aunt of Helena.

On page 18, Captain Cain calls her aviators to action stations. "Action Stations" is the military term used on Colonial warships to call crewmembers to ready for battle. The term is also used by the U.S. and British navies.

In Adama's letter to his father at the end of this issue, he laments that his time aboard the Galactica may be worse than on the last ship. This seems to imply that he has only recently been assigned to Galactica. Again, Blood and Chrome retroactively places him on Galactica two years previous. As far as the other ship, he must be thinking of Argus; presumably he doesn't mention the name because it and his time aboard are still classified. Then again, we later learn in "Endings and Beginnings" that all the letters he's written to his father over the years of his service were never sent because they were filled with classified information which would have been heavily censored, so he didn't bother.