Backronyms, a naked ex-boyfriend, secret societies, a super-rapist's ghost, and closure.

We saw the last issue of Forever Evil: Rogues Rebellion a couple of weeks back, and today we see another last chapter from another tie-in mini-series to the larger event: from 2014, Forever Evil: A.R.G.U.S. #6, "Trustfall" Written by Sterling Gates, pencils by Neil Edwards, inks by Jay Leisten and Jason Paz. As usual, it's not really fair to bag on this coming in only on the end, but we're going ahead anyway...

In a secret tesseract panic room called "the Green Room," President Obama and Etta Candy speak with the shadowed "Green Man," who claims to have been the first agent of A.R.G.U.S, and that the secret organization wasn't a recent addition to support superheroes, but in fact had existed for hundreds of years. The Green Man spins a yarn about its history as the "Armed Revolutionaries Governing Under Secrecy" and the "Anonymous Ranger Group of the United States" and their conflicts against the Hydra to their S.H.I.E.L.D, the Crimson and their Crimson Men. So named because of their goal to "bring on the red skies of the apocalypse." Although he badmouths superhumans a bit, the Green Man tells Candy she needs to unite them to stop the war, and she will know all of A.R.G.U.S.'s secrets...like why every secret organization now has to have been around for hundreds of years, maybe. (I swear I was just looking at what A.R.G.U.S. really stood for, and still don't remember.)

Meanwhile, a naked Steve Trevor awakens, not to the Dr. Light/Killer Frost fight he was expecting, but a confrontation with "the Weird Sisters of Moirai." Steve obviously promised them something, and they've come to collect, taking his potential, or fate. Steve says Diana had told him the Sisters "were full of it," but they take what they want and leave him to it; which is to rejoin the Light/Frost battle already in progress. To save him from Dr. Light, Frost had frozen Steve in a block of ice; now freed, Steve seems to take in stride the fact that last time he saw Dr. Light he was a decapitated corpse on an autopsy table. (The Crimson brought Light back, possibly just to test Steve.) In fact, using the Lasso of Truth, Steve is able to force Light to face that unpleasant truth. (While he appears to have something like the fin-head and goatee of his pre-52 incarnation, Steve also describes him as "a good man once," which the prior version definitely was not.)


Holding the Lasso of Truth--and as such unable to lie--Steve has a moment to recall when he asked Wonder Woman if she loved him, and likewise holding the Lasso, Diana told him:

With Killer Frost, Steve Trevor heads off, to do what he can to save the world, and rebuild A.R.G.U.S. Meanwhile, the Green Man puts on a Crimson skull mask, to tell a pair of costumed figures the pieces were on the board, with A.R.G.U.S. both their pawns, and evolving towards their own doom. Which may or may not have come up again in the last couple of years...This issue is actually less fun than the Rogues one. The cover features Superwoman and Cheetah, and Superwoman only appears as a Dr. Light-created hard-light construct, while Cheetah's unconscious the whole issue! The art is a little closer to DC's house style, but bland. Like Steve Trevor.


Man, Diana could so do better...