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Cosmos In Collision Part 2 – Issue #20

By Will Allred • Tuesday 3/17/09

Quasar #20
Cosmos In Collision Part 2
Mar 1991

Quasar Issue #20
Cosmos In Collision - Part 2
"The Stalking Horse"
March 1991

Writer: Mark Gruenwald
Penciler: Greg Capullo
Inker: Keith Williams
Letterer: Janice Chiang
Colorist: Paul Becton

Quasar #20 starts off with another great cover by Capullo and Williams. It's a great kinetic battle scene with Quasar fighting the Presence and Starlight (former Red Guardian, I believe) and the Fantastic Four in the background. It also shows us that Eon is under attack and makes the Presence appear to be the Cosmic Assassin. Here, the creative team is already building tension…much more effective than the “bunch of super-heroes in fighting pose looking cool” covers that are so ubiquitous these days.

As with last issue, this issue begins with a prolog, detailing the Cosmic Assassin's rise to power in the recent past as he kills and replaces the abstract entity Anomaly. Capullo’s opening splash is truly majestic here.

Gru then cuts back to the present where the Presence apparently kills Quasar and then dispatches Jack of Hearts. Jack is portrayed much more sympathetically here (as opposed to last issue) as he stands his grounds and won’t murder Quasar in cold blood…something the Presence has no problem doing. Quasar survives the Presence's attack and saves the refugee caravan from burning up in the atmosphere. Here Gruenwald makes it a point to have Quasar choose the path that safeguards the most number of lives. He can either save the Jack of Hearts or all of the refugees, but not both, so he makes the choice to save the most lives that he can. This is something that Gru would return to again and again as he basically had Quasar try to make the best choice in impossible circumstances.

Once the refugees have been saved, Quasar then high-tails it to Eon, where the Presence and Starlight are attacking. Using his head, he tricks the Presence into thinking that he has Eon’s heart (apparently, Eon can survive without it for 3.14 hours) and lures him into orbit where he banishes the Presence to the Quantum Zone. With Eon’s heart returned and the Cosmic Assassin defeated, Quasar is on top of the world. And this is when Gru pulls the rug out from under both Quasar and the readers. Wendell chances upon Kayla and Makkari in a passionate embrace and then discovers that his father is dead (Dr. Gilbert Vaughn died in Quasar #12, killed by the Cosmic Assassin). It gets worse, Eon had been animating Dr. Vaughn’s corpse to make Quasar think his father was still alive. Betrayed by the woman he loved, his best friend, and his mentor, Quasar quits as Protector of the Universe. The reader is left with an image of the true Cosmic Assassin revealing that all is going according to plan.

Quasar #20
Page 20

Capullo and Williams turn in a beautiful issue with Capullo once again playing with page design. He nicely conveys the claustrophobic atmosphere of Eon’s insides while also displaying an almost vertigo inducing layout only pages before. The colorist here, Paul Becton, deserves some credit here, too, for giving Eon’s insides a distinctive palette that set it apart from the other locales in this issue.

Gruenwald accelerates the plot here as events are set in motion that will provide the impetus for the headlong rush into the finale. “Stalking Horse” is absolutely essential to the overall structure of Cosmos In Collision and demonstrates Gru's skill at plotting. He deftly takes the reader along for a ride that hits an emotional high with the banishment of the Presence and then quickly bottoms-out as Wendell is apparently betrayed by Kayla, Makkari and Eon. This issue really ends on a low note with an unstated promise that things are going to get much, much worse.

Will

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