Well I guess thats the end of the invasion storyline. I have to say the build up was good, if marred by the now proven meaningless detour to Mars. But the ending was a real letdown. This might have made a better prose story than a comic.
Here's the deal about the Mars "detour." It is one segment in an ongoing story line, "The King and I," that also tours human colonies on Venus and Mercury. Which, in turn lead to a subsequent arc. As prose, it was written as a distinct story from the Rhonda arc. The decision was made to blend them, in part, to let the artists switch off. I think in the final book format, it will work, because it will read much faster than with a daily drip.
As to the dramatic construction of the end of the arc, it represents a tried and true technique. Usually, the rule is, "show, don't tell." However, there are some clear exceptions. L. Neil Smith and I had a conversation about it. In one of his Martyn books, the evil brother tortures the good brother, to death. Neil's only reference to the torture was to have the bad brother say, "First, we will start with the eyes..." (ellipses included.) Now
that is scary.
My two equivalents in this arc were, "Just for their sick amusement, those animals were humiliating and terrorizing Kate. They had her stripped naked and tied to the storage shelves. They
did things ..." and "Chang, my men are only human." In both cases, details are left to the reader's imagination. What did
you imagine?
I'm betting readers came up with truly vile visions that would beat anything we could illustrate in a panel. So I think it is far better to just drop hints in the denouement and let readers run wild and create their own mental horror show.
I bet you like the "Hostel" movies. They don't leave
anything to the imagination.