Letter 44 #5 – Review

By: Charles Soule (story), Alberto Jiménez Alburquerque (art), Dan Jackson (colors)

The Story: Intellectual curiosity kills the scientist.

The Review: Soule is no dummy, so I can’t believe that he doesn’t have some purpose in making Letter 44’s former President Carroll as easily analogized to the real former President Bush as he has. It’s possible some of Soule’s political prejudices are coming into play here, but more clearly, Soule is using the conspiracy theories revolving around Bush as fictional fertilizer, giving life to these paranoid speculations for their pure, dramatic value.

Here, Soule goes well beyond the wildest dreams of all but the most extreme theorists, portraying Carroll as not only a bitter voice from the past administration, but an ominous presence who may have his hand in Stephen’s current presidential troubles. As I understand it, it’s not atypical for an ex-president to retain a security detail even after he leaves the White House. But how common is it for him to reside in a secret White House replica located in a southwestern canyon and replete with former SEALs and SpecOps? What does that exactly say about him?