What do you do when all the important countries have turned down your requests for help in gaining recognition as a legitimate nation? You turn to a sketchy (fictional) little African country with an undeniably evil dictator and a damning history of human rights violations.

After recovering from the assassination attempt, Chaz must work with some terrible people to achieve his goals. Here’s the official description of Great Pacific #9 from Image:

Founding New Texas was hard enough. But if Chas Worthington is to gain international support for his young country, it will take all the allies he can gather… 

It’s always fun to read about a character who’s constantly one step ahead of his overconfident enemies (it’s one part of what has kept Batman popular for so long) and that’s certainly true here with Chas. Although Joe Harris has shown us Chas’ ability to outmaneuver his opponents, Game of Thrones-style, before, he’s never done it quite this well, or with such an interesting adversary. That said, the dialogue in these sections is a bit disjointed, particularly early on.

There’s been a subplot bubbling away in Great Pacific for a couple issues now, involving those glowing fish with far too many teeth and the giant submarine that mimics them. That plot bubbles closer to the surface this issue, but still doesn’t quite make it to a boil, even though it does provide some action that would be missing from the issue otherwise.

Martin Morazzo keeps the artwork interesting, an impressive feat, considering much of the issue is composed of talking heads. This is the most expressive facial work we’ve seen from him thus far. One particular sly-as-a-fox look from Chas toward the end is flat-out beautiful, though the panel itself gives the page an odd layout.  There’s also a beautiful double page spread in the middle that does a great job of capturing the essence of the series.

While the end of Great Pacific‘s second arc is still a few issues away, I can feel Joe Harris setting up the pieces to drastically shift the series’ status quo yet again.

4/5

Zac Boone is back home from California, doing the creeper thing where he sits outside Starbucks at 1 a.m. to use the Wifi. Follow him on twitter.