“WildC.A.T.s” Vol 1 Issues 25 – 28

This entry cover “WildC.A.T.s” volume one issues 25 through 28 by Alan Moore, Travis Charest, Scott Clark, Aron Wiesenfeld, Kevin Nowlan, John Nyberg, Dave Johnson, Troy Hubbs, JD, Scott Williams, Dexter Vines and Bob Wiacek

When we last left “WildC.A.T.s” we had our original team on the planet Khera, home to team members Lord Emp and Lady Zannah, and the rest of the team just found out that the Kherubim/Daemonite War is over. Not only that but it’s been over for quite some time. The rest of the team are going to ask Emp and Zannah what is up with that, and what they, as a group, are going to do? Turns out neither Emp nor Zannah have any plans to leave. In fact, they are running against each other for a Kheran senate seat! After Emp blows them off and Zannah gets into a mini-smackdown with Pris, Pris pretty much calls the whole “WildC.A.T.s” thing bullshit and is already aiming to leave the team, and Khera, as soon as she can.

Since the team has been on Khera, the latest bootup of Spartan has been, well, little more than Emp’s lap dog. Turns out Spartan has just been biding his time and set a late-night alarm to wake himself up to be, well, himself! He immediately goes forth to find his teammates and find out why everything is spiraling out of control. While he’s no closer to any real answers while visiting any of them, when he goes to visit Zannah he finds her asleep and some of her Coda sisters scheming against her as well as Emp. They have a plan to disrupt the entire Kherubim Senate! Before Spartan can get a good idea of what they’re going on about, a few other Coda sisters find and trash him, eventually leaving him for dead in the Daemonite ghetto where Pris has been confined.

Once the team has Spartan up and running he lets them know the Coda is involved in the sabotage that not even Zannah knows about. All they know is that the Titanothropes will be blamed for whatever is going to happen. Once on site Void puts it together that the fancy sword that the Coda gave Zannah, that she has at her side, was made by the Titanothropes. Also, that sword has a bomb inside it. Uh-oh! Before any of our regular heroes can react, Jeremy’s alien gal-pal Glingo grows big, snatches the sword and keep growing to get the sword as far away from everyone as she can. The sword explodes and Glingo gives her life for the planet she loved so dearly.

 

Zannah is shocked that she was chosen for martyrdom rather than a true shot at the Senate seat. Emp, meanwhile, is becoming disgusted with how his fellow Parthenon members are ready to seize upon the horrors of the day to further their goals. The whole team is now in agreeance, it’s time to go home, time to get back to Earth.

Speaking of Earth, we see the All-New, Not Entirely Different WildC.A.Ts dealing with the aftermath of H.A.R.M.’s funeral. They’ve taken Attica, Slag, and Deathtrap into custody and have them hooked into the same virtual reality prison that they’d previously used to tame Maxine. While imprisoning them Savant starts mad crushing on Tao. They eventually start making out, only being interrupted by a drunken Irish superhero getting into a fight with Majestic.

“Wait? How’d that happen?” you ask. Well, I’m here to tell you. It’s kinda the point of this whole blog. Cole Cash is meeting up with his buddy Michael Cray, and Cray is already drinking with Hellstrike from StormWatch. They get to talking and Cole mentions that the new WildC.A.T.s have managed to capture Deathtrap. Due to the personal history between them, Deathtrap being a StormWatch target, and the fact that ole Hellstrike’s had a few too many pints, he decides to go after the new WildC.A.T.s and show them a thing or two about respect!

Hellstrike holds his own against Majestic and Maxine and isn’t really taken down until Max fires a concussive shell near his head, giving Hellstrike an instant headache. This gives Majestic the edge to thump him one and start getting an explanation. While explaining that StormWatch was going to after Deathtrap and the Mercs in a few weeks, Tao walks up and lets Hellstrike know that Deathtrap has escaped. Not only that, but Tao left a tracker on Deathtrap and gives Hellstrike the device to track the tracker. Cole and Cray take Hellstrike with them and wish the new team luck. This is when Tao reveals that the tracking device he gave Hellstrike can also be used by the team to spy on Hellstrike and StormWatch. While Majestic is pretty miffed about all this, the rest of the team thinks it’s pretty funny.

 

Well since it hasn’t been two weeks yet, this leaves Deathtrap plenty of time to be checking up on this new WildC.A.T.s team that trapped him and busted up a funeral. He happens upon a reality show called “Fuzz” and it features the team in action against the shapeshifting Mr. White. He takes a recording of this to New York City crime boss Tony Twist and shows him that this new WildC.A.T.s team is a proactive one, and if he means to continue to run the NYC underworld, he best take out this team before they come gunning for him.

Twist first sets his boys on taking out Max. Max manages to keep outsmarting and gunning down Twist’s men while wearing only his undies. Maxine shows up just in time to help, even though she thinks this is a date with her and Max. Max admits that he does like her and takes her to Clark’s later that night. While at Clark’s Max spots a familiar face, turns out it is Vic Lazaar, the goon from the presidential theme restaurant. Max thinks “Why the hell is a villain at Clark’s?” Turns out that Vic was dropping off a bomb, and Max runs to where Vic just came from to check it out/stop it, but that doesn’t matter, it blows up injuring Max pretty terribly.

While Cole, Cray, and Maxine rush Max to the hospital Majestic is wondering why the villains of today would bomb such an establishment as Clark’s. While this makes Majestic angry, Tao suggests that it could help them grow their ranks in the crime war, now that StormWatch and other super folks had been in the line of fire. Tao sets up a meeting with StormWatch and while said meeting is going on, the intruder alarms in the Halo building are going off. What or who could it be? Why it is the original WildC.A.T.s team back home and wondering what the hell is going on!

Continuity Corner:

• When we catch up with Cray and Cash at Clark’s, Cray remarks about Cash just getting back in town. I guess after the raid on the towers the Team 7 boys split up for just a bit to deal with what just happened in their own ways.
• We also see Grunge and Lynch hanging out at Clark’s. Grunge is once again having no luck with getting underage drinks, and Lynch, who knows who he’s hanging out with? Maybe it’s Dane, they always kinda got along, or maybe it’s Slayton showing why Cash didn’t go sit with them instead.
• Never been sure if the Deathtrap that talks Tony Twist into the crime war was actually Deathtrap or if it was Mr. White. We know that Tao wanted the crime war to start and know later that Tao hypnotized Mr. White. Plus when we next see Deathtrap shooting at Cole during the crime war he only mentions H.A.R.M.’s funeral and not the takedown of Mr. White as his motivating factor joining the war in “WildC.A.T.s” volume one issue 32.
• When Max and Maxine are headed to Clark’s he talks about how he and Cole used to hang out around Clark’s and check out the superheroes that patronized the place. Cute story, but the Cash boys grew up in Chicago, not NYC. Maybe their gangster step-dad had business out East and took the boys with him… that’s my best guess to make this work.
• Savant tells Majestic not to act like her father! Ha!
• While everyone else in the Halo building looks shocked to see Reno asking “What the hell is going on here?” Tao looks upset like his favorite video game just got taken away from him. If it wasn’t for the whole “Fire from Heaven” craziness I’m sure the old team would’ve cottoned on to Tao’s plan earlier and stopped it and he knew it. He looks like a kid who is fearing his looming bedtime.

NEXT: “Fire from Heaven” issue 1/2, “Sword of Damocles” issue 1, “Sigma” issue 1 and “Deathblow” volume one issue 26 by Johnathan Peterson, Warren Ellis, Brandon Choi, Tom Joyner, Randy Green, Tomm Coker, J.J. Kirby, Ryan Odagawa, Mel Rubi, Danny Bulanadi, Bob Wiacek, John Tighe, Mark Irwin, Richard Friend, Troy Hubbs and Trevor Scott,

 

“Brass” Vol. 1

This entry covers “Brass” volume one issues 1 through 3 by Richard Bennett and Aron Wiesenfeld.

Hershel Goldstein has a lot of problems. First, he’s working a job he hates scrubbing toilets in a dance club. The upside is that this job, and a good friend, is what helped him out of homelessness. Second, he had a cat that I’m not sure if he likes or not. Such is the way with kitties. Finally, Hershel Goldstein is dying of cancer. A soon to be hero unsure of life because he is dying of cancer? That sounds a little familiar…

After getting the bad news Hershel is riding the city bus back home. Coincidentally there’s another guy on the bus with similar build, longish hair and a trench coat similar to Hershel’s. This doppelganger first exposes himself to a child and then shoots and kills the bus driver. The bad guy gets away and Hershel ambles on home, once again bemoaning his fate as a reason why he shouldn’t care about what just went down. The world sucks, so why should I try, an edgy teenager who just read Nietzsche kinda thing.

Due to a murder in a public place, there are police questioning witnesses to the crime. Not sure how they got ole Hersh’s info, but they show up at his doorstep. As mentioned, Hershel has long hair as well as a trench coat. The cops see this, as well as some blood on Hershel’s shirt, and they like him for the murderer. Hershel smartly notices this, and then not-so-wisely runs. Hershel tries to lose the police by running down a subway tunnel. As he’s booking through the subway he falls down into a strange room full of highly advanced tech. He touches some and becomes a kick-ass robot bastard!

How did this hidden room full of tech come to be? Well, if it walks like crazy fringe science and talks like questionable super-powered human upgrades, it’s gotta be Miles Craven. It seems as if I/O found the Brass Virus, of course, and that means Miles wants them to use it to see if they can create some superhumans to do his bidding for the government. So the I/O scientists injected it into a fly as well as 4 humans. They all got teched out, but then went on a rampage. It took I/O and some pre-superpowered Team 7 members to calm this new species down. In the end, I/O decided to hide all the Brass experiments as well as the virus in the sewers and tunnels under the NYC subway. Not a bad place I guess, it’s been the hideout of everything from ninja turtles to a beastly Ron Pearlman.

Deathblow and Arclight are just as curious as we are about their Team 7 cameo.

Back to the Present: Just as Hershel is getting used to his big brassy body, the Brass virus also infects the cops that were after Hershel. These others start to cause destruction in New York City. Hershel tries his best to stop them and is helped out by not only I/O’s jet fighters but also an electromagnetic pulse from the goddamned MIR space station. That last one takes out the final member of the Police Brass, but it takes down Hershel along with it.

While Hershel is down for the count he enters a dreamlike state while his body is hauled away by I/O. In this dream, he meets a representation of the Brass Virus. The virus tells Hershel that I/O has implanted a retrovirus into him to control the Brass Virus, and thus control each of them. The virus suggests that they merge together which will destroy I/O’s retrovirus and also keep I/O from being able to control either of them. Hershel pulls an “Invisibles” move and becomes friends with the virus and manages to survive it, beating I/O at their own game.

I/O and Craven send him home figuring their retrovirus beat out the Brass Virus. I guess they figure they can activate Hershel at will and he’d do their bidding to have them shut down his Brass body. This could’ve been a cool idea, but hey, it’s also cool that Hershel is in control and I/O doesn’t even know it. This may’ve come to a head if Craven was around longer to do anything about it. By the way, seems Hershel’s cat got loose, but I/O finds him and Craven personally returns the cat. It seems lil Micho has managed to become to be Brassed up as well!

Continuity Corner:

• I always liked “Brass” volume one placed here because we see Roxy and Grunge in issue 3 trying to sneak into a bar in NYC. I figure it’s after they got to NYC, but before they meet up with Team 7. Grunge’s short hair point to this being a solid placement. The only problem with that is the “Weeks later” caption we see when Craven comes to return Hershel’s cat. I doubt the Gen13 kids spent a week in NYC waiting to raid the I/O Towers, and due to the events of their raid (Craven’s death) we can’t assume this “Weeks later” event took place weeks after the next batch of books we’re about to read. So we have to ignore the “Weeks later” caption because even if we ignore Grunge’s short hair, I can’t place the Gen13 team in NYC at all. Their trip to Coda Island didn’t have a layover there (it flew from San Diego to Puerto Rico) and their flight back from Rome was direct to San Diego (Roxy mentions it was 16hrs straight, and that flight would indeed be 16 without layovers.)
• Pretty sure the reason we see Craven with this woman Sharon by his side is that all his other lackeys are busy. It’s telling that we never see her again, once Craven was gone she high-tailed it out of I/O. She was probably as dirty as he was. Also, it is nice that by using Sharon we can’t come across any other continuity errors like we could’ve if had been one of the Brethren, Alicia Turner or Frank Colby in that role.
• All the Brass Virus experiments are going on in an I/O underground bunker in Arizona. We know that I/O has Sector 52, which is a vast underground bunker in the Mojave Desert, and part of the Mojave Desert is in Arizona, so I’m going to figure this is the same place we see later on as Sector 52 starting in “WildC.A.T.s” volume one issue 37.
• The initial 4 Brass Virus victims must move fastly, as they’ve gone from Arizona all the way to a tropical island in the Gulf of Mexico. Also, Craven and Lynch seem to get to the Gulf of Mexico pretty quickly from wherever they’re at… it looks like somewhere in the Rockies.
• Craven is drawn in 1967 as looking pretty much the same as modern-day Craven, we’ll see later in “WildC.A.T.s” volume one issue 39 that young Craven had blond curly hair. I’ll admit, it helps us here track who he is and how it relates to this story, even if we’ll encounter a slight continuity wrinkle later.
• The Team 7 scenes take place back in 1967 and we already see John Lynch working with Miles. We know that Lynch had his little adventure in the “Lynch” one-shot in 1968. In that story, the narrator states that after the ’68 adventure Lynch went on to great things in the military. For me that doesn’t mean he wasn’t already in the military and wasn’t in Team 7 yet, he had just yet to attain the greatness that the narrator spoke of.
• In “Brass” volume two we find out that the Brass Virus is from another dimension that unloaded it to our dimension because it was too dangerous to be near and they couldn’t destroy it. So that’s some crazy alien robo-tech that Hershel has going on up in his bloodstream.

NEXT: the rest of “Deathblow” volume one issue 24 and then all of issue 25 by Brandon Choi, Tom Joyner, Jeff Mariotte, Scott Kolins, Geof Isherwood, Trevor Scott and Rick Bryant

“WildStorm : Chamber of Horrors”

this entry covers the short story “Portrait” from “Overstreet Fan Magazine” issue 4 and the “WildStorm : Chamber of Horrors” one shot.

“Portrait” is a two-page story that opens with Zealot stealing something from the Coda. While Zealot is fighting we get a narration from Savant about how different they each are and why. The story ends with Zealot delivering what she took from the Coda to Savant. It’s the head of an ancient Greek statue, a statue of Zealot herself. The story ends in Savant’s office in the Smithsonian, coincidently, that’s exactly where our next story takes place!

Ok, so what we have here is WildStorm’s attempt at their very own “Treehouse of Horror.” Remember when those started, there was a framing story of the Simpson kids telling scary stories to each other, and we have that here. The team, sitting around in the Smithsonian telling spooky stories. Some are stories from their past, a history of Tapestry that Zealot knows, or in Reno’s case, a horrible dream!

There’s not too much here. Reno keeps having a nightmare of visiting his parents’ graves, them rising as zombies, turning into Daemonites, trying to kill him and succeeding. We’ll find out more about Reno’s background later, but it’s that as a kid some Daemonites burned down his folks’ house and he carries the guilt of not being there to save them. Him telling this story to Savant gets the whole ball of wax going.

Jacob chimes in with his story from back in his Saul Baxter days. Seems he got set up with a woman whose whole body had been taken over by spiders who were then controlling her, much like 3 kids in a coat and fedora pretending to be a grown man. Also, there was a crazed axe murderer, who flummoxed the cops who shot him due to his not having a hook for a hand. Basically, a bunch of old urban legends tossed together. I don’t know if we can trust Jacob on this one.

Zealot tells a story of Tapestry being the witch that set off the Salem Witch Trials. And Savant gives a story of being careful what you wish for, but back in pirate times! While all of the stories are kinda meh, these last two don’t do much storywise other than showing us a bit of WSU history. I mean, that’s what I assume because Savant saw a pirate getting hanged by the name of Henry Fletcher/the Bloody Hawk, and I can’t find any reference to him being a real person or pirate. We shoulda got some sweet WildStorm pirate stories outta that guy!

Continuity Corner:

• In this issue, Zealot has short hair. The editor must’ve been asleep at the wheel because there’s just no way for this to’ve happened. Unless Zealot grows her hair very quickly. Is that a known Kherubim trait? Rapid hair growth? I know this kind of puts it at odds with having “Portrait” right before it, but this is something that’s best overlooked.
• Maybe rapid hair growth is a Kherubim trait, Savant grew quite a coiffe in a few pages!
• I did the research, the beehive hairdo was created in 1960, so Jacob’s story (if he’s not pulling our leg, as it’s the only story that seems like it could be false) would have to be happening shortly before the “Team One” books.
• So, Tapestry was active in 1692. And this was still years before Zealot had her 100 years of indentured servitude with her? I always thought “the Price” from “WildC.A.T.s” Vol. 1 issue 13 had taken place centuries earlier!
• Savant still seems fine just 12 years later in 1704, so I guess she hadn’t been poisoned quite yet. Man, when does Zealot submit to Tapestry for all that time? I guess there’s still time, I mean, as long as it happens before 1860, I guess we’re still looking at a workable timeline.
• Also, yes, I do find it odd that Deathblow is on the cover of this issue and it only concerns the members of the “WildC.A.T.s” book.

NEXT: “WetWorks” Vol. 1 issues 4 – 7 by Whilce Portacio, Francis Takenaga & Scott Williams