Halo: Escalation Issue 17

Halo: Escalation Issue 17 was released on April 22, 2015 and is the seventeenth comic in the Halo: Escalation series. It is the start of a two-part story arc called "The Glass Horizon", introducing Spartan Tanaka.

Plot synopsis
The issue opens in 2550 in Kynur, Minab's capital city, with Holly Tanaka's mother washing dishes and reminiscing a picture of her family when the Covenant attack and glass the planet. Six years later, two ODSTs aboard the observe the recently-glassed colony world of Cleyell; one of the ODSTs tells the other that some Covenant fringe groups continue the practice of glassing planets even in the aftermath of the Human-Covenant War, and Cleyell was attacked only recently. The ODSTs' commanding officer arrives at the scene and tells them that a distress signal was picked up on the planet's surface, indicating that they may need to organize a search-and-rescue mission. One of the ODSTs questions this, stating that any survivors only make it for around a month after a glassing. Holly Tanaka—a sergeant in the UNSC Army's 412th Engineer Command—then joins the conversation, revealing that survivors from her homeworld's glassing were recovered three years later. Tanaka was part of a mining crew of ten on the other side of the planet during the capital's glassing; however, by the time they were found, the number of survivors had dwindled down to three. The narrative then jumps back to the year 2551 as Tanaka relates her experiences on the glassed Minab.

Production notes
This is the first issue to show the Ruuhtian and Ibie'shan Kig-Yar sub-types fighting side by side.

Mistakes

 * Tanaka's hair style changes between panels.
 * The speech bubble of the line "Well, it doesn't concern you, so..." (a dismissive remark to Tanaka's interruption of the ODSTs' conversation in the beginning) erroneously points to the commander rather than the bald ODST, to whom the line belongs based on the following panel.
 * Holly's father refers to the firearm fought over by two of the survivors as a rifle, despite the weapon clearly being drawn as a pump-action shotgun.