“DV8” vol. 1 issues 1/2 and 5

This entry covers the “DV8” issues 1/2 and 5  by Warren Ellis, JJ Kirby, Humberto Ramos, Randy Elliot, Dexter Vines, Saleem Crawford, Sal Reglas, and Wendy Fouts.

Our first story concerns the DV8 kids sitting around telling the grossest things they’ve ever experienced. Whoever has the least gross story has to drink an unholy concoction of various liquids from about the penthouse. This “half” issue is more a less an excuse from some gross out humor from Frostbite, Sublime, Evo, Powerhaus, and Copycat. Each story escalates until we get to Copycat, and before she can think of one Sideways Bob pops in to see what the game is about. And if it is gross stories you want, Bob has them for days. He tells so many the kids eventually beg him to stop. To that Bob declares that he is the winner, and that the winner makes a new rule. His rule is that all 5 of the kids have to split the bowl full of gross liquid at the center of the table as Sideways Bob hands out straws to the DV8 kids.

In issue 5 we have all the kids, including Threshold and Bliss on a mission to steal some teleportation device from some Japanese inventors. The Japanese firm was supposed to create new this “teleplate” for StormWatch, but their new invention also created what amounted to “free energy” which is why they probably won’t hand it over to StormWatch. It’s also why Ivanna wants it.

The kids break in and Threshold is going… well, kill-crazy, but that’s pretty normal for him. As the rest of the DV8 kids are defending themselves and getting a few shots in Copycat vanishes. Turns out that Copycat stepped on a teleplate and no one is sure where she went. That fact doesn’t matter to Threshold, he’s found a teleplate, that’s the mission, time to go home. This, of course, does not wash with the rest of the kids.

Where is Copycat? She’s seeing herself in an endless white void. In case you forgot, Copycat has several different personalities that rattle around in her head. They are all conversing amongst each other trying to find their escape.

Outside the void tensions are rising w/ everyone against Threshold’s idea for leaving Copycat behind. A fight breaks out, and ultimately Powerhaus kicks Threshold’s ass! He then reaches out using his power to absorb emotion, looking for a direction that Copycat may be in.

Powerhaus locates Copycats body hooked up to a bunch of machines in a small room. Turns out the white void is nothing more than a type of virtual reality, acting as a sort of prison for trespassers. As she comes to she is not as thankful as Powerhaus would’ve thought. Turns out, all that time in the void was getting her multiple personalities to integrate! She surmises that it wouldn’t’ve been much longer for full integration and now that’s something that Powerhaus and rest have stolen from her. She really starts to go crazy beating on Powerhaus until Sublime wacks her in the back of the head knocking Copycat out. Sublime is sick of it, she says if Ivana wants the teleplate she can come back for it herself, and as for the rest of the team, you’re all on your own, we won’t look after each other any longer.

Continuity Corner

• The “Half” issue fit perfect here, because the kids were all “let’s be friends” after issue 4, and then by 5 they were all “screw that friends nonsense” by issue’s end. So it’s the best logical placement. (It’s also when it was published, but that’s never been too reliable as far as these kinds of things go)

NEXT: “Backlash” issues 21 – 23 by Sean Ruffner, Brett Booth, JJ Kirby, John Tighe, Saleem Crawford, Mark Irwin, Martin Jimenez, Tad Ehrlich,  and George Davis

Where to Find These Stories

• the “DV8: Neighborhood Threat” trade paper back contains both stories
• Comixology: “DV8” issue 5
• Comixology: “DV8: Neighborhood Threat” collection

“DV8” Vol. 1 issue 3 & 4

This entry covers “DV8” volume one issues 3 and 4 by Warren Ellis, Michael Lopez, Humberto Ramos, Troy Hubbs, Sal Regla, and Wendy Fouts

It’s a “Boy’s Night Out” for Evo and Frostbite. Both were pretty bored staying in the penthouse, not to mention kinda creeped out by Sideways Bob making out with Lucille that they leave and see what the neighborhood has to offer.  Turns out it’s a lot, but none of it good! There’s street justice, rampant drug use, and a drive-by shooting. Not only that but there’s a girl named Memorie.

Memorie is leading Evo and Frostbite around, shortly after the boys are shot at. She keeps talking, doing drugs, and leading the boys from one messed up situation to the next, but something just not right about her. Evo is even having trouble getting a scent from her. After getting into a scrap with the local toughs an old woman calls for help and Evo and Frostbite oblige. Turns out the woman’s daughter has passed out due to an OD. Evo and Frostbite break into her room and revive her, because, as Frostbite says, “I am sick of people dying!” Yep, that girl is Memorie, who said she dreamed she was talking to Evo and Frostbite.

Meeting strange girls doesn’t always turn out so well. Take Powerhaus in our next story. Boy meets girl. Boy is convinced to go home with girl. Girl works for the CIA and this was all a set up to capture boy. Tale as old as time. Luckily Sideways Bob has a tracker that can read pain on each of the kids and sees that Powerhaus’s is going off and he’s nearing death. Evo, Frostbite, and Sublime decide, against Ivana’s objections, that they need to go save him, mostly in the spirit of friendship and team solidarity, but possibly to piss off Ivana. Bliss opts out because she realizes that she isn’t quite like the rest of the team and their connection, while Copycat joins the other kids, she feels much the same way as Bliss.

Speaking of girl trouble, the reason Threshold isn’t with the group is that he’s recovering from the Gen-Factor booster shot Ivana gave him. He’s currently drugged up out of his mind. Threshold is both deeply in love with and fearful of Ivana. With good reason, while in his drugged up fugue state it seems to be implied that Ivana was the person who killed his mother!

Back at the CIA compound, Sublime, Frostbite, and Evo bust through the doors, walls, and roof to free Powerhaus. They quickly realize that they are up against the CIA, and that the CIA are pissed off and are seeking retaliations for when the kids stole that little alien back in issue 1. While punching out the men in suits, the gal that lured Powerhaus in the first place makes a bolt for the exit, too busy none of the others can help. But here’s where Copycat steps up, because seeing how the other three went to the mat for Powerhaus, she can see herself trusting the others and becoming friends.

With all members of the CIA team knocked out, the others are like “Duh Copycat! We’re pals!” because ultimately if those 5 don’t have each other’s backs, who can they rely on? Bliss? Threshold? Sideways Bob? Ivanna? Fat chance!

CONTINUITY CORNER

• We’re seeing Evo watch a TV report about the plane crash that we just saw StormWatch Prime deal with in “StormWatch” volume one issue 40, showing that “DV8” issue 3 is happening at roughly the same time, or shortly thereafter.
• Here we start seeing Frostbite doubt working for Ivanna, he’s not totally cool with all the killing they’ve been doing lately. It’s going to be a long slow road before he gets free.
• Memorie being able to interact in the real world while ODing seems like a very odd thing, especially when we don’t know her to have any powers. In the next issue we have the CIA chick seducing Powerhaus with a the promise of trying a new Gamorrian drug. Is this what Memorie took? The side-effects seem like something that could come out of a lab in Gamorra. Then again, lil miss CIA could’ve been bull-shitting about the drug…
• The art in Threshold’s hallucination appears to depict Ivana, or at least a woman, killing Stephan Callahan, but we know from “Gen13” volume one issue 1 that Frank Colby was the triggerman. Chalk it up to drugged out and messed up visions. 

NEXT: “Gen13 : Interactive” issues 1 – 3 by Mike Heisler, Jason Johnson, Edwin Rosell, and JD.

Where to Find These Stories

• the “DV8: Neighborhood Threat” trade paper back
• Comixology: “DV8” issues 3 and 4
• Comixology: “DV8: Neighborhood Threat” collection

“DV8” issues 1 & 2

This entry covers “DV8” issues 1 and 2 by Warren Ellis, Humberto Ramos, Sal Regla, Troy Hubbs, and Peter Gazman

Alright, time to catch up with Ivana’s reprobates from Project Genesis. It’s the DV8 kids and they’re really not as bad as we’ve been lead to believe from previous comics. In fact, most of them could be pretty stand up folks if it wasn’t for who’s in charge of them, that being Ivana, Threshold and to a lesser extent Bliss. And adding to the cast of unstable, unreliable, and inadequate guardians we’re introduced to Sideways Bob, a former I/O agent who is kinda nuts and doesn’t mind working for Ivana. He also has a mannequin head named Lucille for a girlfriend.  While the DV8 kids aren’t too sure about him, it’s always good to have more muscle protecting them around.

OK, who are the DV8 kids AKA the Deviants? We have Leon AKA Frostbite who can control heat, Rachel AKA Sublime who can control her personal density, Hector AKA Powerhaus who can amass muscle and strength based on surrounding emotion, Michael AKA Evo who can change into various animal forms to survive practically anything and Gem AKA Copycat who can control body movements of other people. Oh and Gem also has multiple personalities, in addition to her own, mostly dominate personality, that can take over her own body named Little Gemma, the Soldier, the Spy and the Nihilist. That’s a lot going of for this character, along with a fairly large cast, but I’ll have to say it works more often than not.

Getting to the issues at hand, we see the kids being introduced to their new digs in a New York City penthouse. They all run to claim their own suites in the penthouse like an upscale version of Big Brother as Threshold doubts if it was wise to set up shop so close to normal people. Ivana explains it’s all a bit of an experiment, as the kids have little to no idea what the real world holds and it’ll be interesting to see how they’ll react. She gives the kids wads of cash to go and do whatever their hearts desire before shortly calling them all back home to go on a mission for her.

Ivana’s mission is to steal an object from I/O in upstate New York before I/O has a chance to ship it to France. The team goes in following Threshold’s direction, Rachel and Gem seem a little dubious about Threshold’s order to kill, but follow his direction anyway. They find the package and it’s a small grey alien. After arguing who’s going to carry the thing to their get-away-chopper the manage to take flight. Unfortunately I/O shot up the chopper so much that by the time the team made back to NYC they had a crash landing and the alien exploded all over Gem.

Our second issue opens with the kids trying to get drinks at Clark’s. This of course doesn’t go well and after a dust up with Hellstrike from StormWatch a full-on bar brawl ensues. Lucky for the DV8 kids they find Sideways Bob outside with a limo and ready to kids to their next mission. There’s a group out in LA that goes by the name “Twist,” they’re Gen-Active and they are also lead by a former I/O agent. The DV8 kids (minus Threshold) head out to the desert to confront Twist. While everyone else is in the dark, Bliss was told by Ivana to try and recruit any of the Twist kids if possible. The rest of the kids make it clear to Bliss that Bliss keeping the rest of the kids out of the loop can’t lead to anything good.

The group heads out into the desert surrounding Los Angeles and after meeting the Twist kids: Texas, Blind Lemon, the Smoking Boy and Virginia Dentata they are greeted with their leader, Menlove. While Bliss and Menlove go inside the Twist house to see if they can come to an agreement the rest of kids hang out with each other in the sand. Blind Lemon tells Leon that he’s going to kill her, the Smoking Boy keeps creeping out Rachel and smoking crack and Virginia and Micheal try to find a quite place away from everyone. Virginia’s quite place is the house cellar and it’s not empty, it’s full of Gen-Active’s that Menlove found that didn’t develop powers, just mutations. Meanwhile Bliss is finding out all about Menlove’s past and how he got kicked out of I/O. Turns out he liked messing with young girls, particularly one named Nicole. Bliss realizes he’s talking about her and kills him, she then bursts out of the house telling the DV8 kids everyone needs to die. Rachel and Leon had already got the idea that they needed to get the hell out of there, they didn’t need to be told twice and Leon proceeds to explode the place. Once home they wake Ivana for answers, where she tells them that Twist needed to be eliminated, but wanted the DV8 kids to see how good they had it with her before destroying them. Bliss suddenly knows what it is like to be kept in the dark.

Continuity Corner:

• While at Clarks’s we have Hellstrike and Fuji looking a bit different to their current “StormWatch” version, but I suppose Hellstrike can look however he wants, and Fuji has a variety of “suits” he can use, so it isn’t too out of continuity. I cannot explain what Pris is doing at Clark’s though, maybe she’s still traveling around before she lands in New Orleans.
• I figure that the first issue could’ve happened during the same week as our last several books, but the second issue feel like it occurs some time later. I’m fine with putting them both together here for readability’s sake.

Where to find these stories:

• the “DV8: Neighborhood Threat” trade paperback
• Comixology: “DV8” issues 1 & 2
• Comixology: “DV8: Neighborhood Threat” collection

NEXT: “Hazard” issues 5 – 7 by Jeff Mariotte, Jason Johnson, Roy Allen Martinez, Edgar Tadeo, Richard Friend and Gerry Alanguilen

“Gen13” Vol 2 issues 6 – 7

This entry covers “Gen13” volume two issues 6 and 7 by Brandon Choi, J. Scott Campbell, Jim Lee and Scott Williams.

The Gen13 kids are on their way to America, but due to an airport strike, they get stuck in Rome, Italy. Apparently, James McArthur hooked the kids up with a friend of his and Lynch’s to take care of the kids while they wait for a flight home. Mr. Bovini gets the kids outfitted in fancy high fashions, and new haircuts for the ladies, before taking them out to a swanky dinner.

At din din, Grunge acts like a cad and upsets Roxy, but Bobby cheers her up. Speaking of “cheers” the kids share a bit too many drinks. Which results in Grunge throwing up and Rainmaker and Bobby making out until they pass out. The next morning Rainmaker brushes Bobby off, which sends him into a tizzy, leading him to overreact flying straight up into the air, blazing flames. Unfortunately, this attracts the attention of the local authorities, as it is a violation of something or other, and Italy thinks it may be under superpowered attack or whatever.

Our old pals the Order of the Cross seem to have their superhero team known as the Centurions. They’re not fooling around as they manage to capture Roxy, Grunge, and Caitlin. They also knock a whole building down on Rainmaker, which can’t be good. While most of the Centurions team are concentrating on the aforementioned capture of the kids, one member, Domina, is after Bobby. She just about takes him out before he’s saved by an unlikely ally. It’s Ms. Bliss! By “Ms. Bliss” I mean Nicole Callahan and not Hayley Mills.

So where has Bliss been? Well, her, her brother Threshold and their boss Ivana Baiul have been holed up on Caballito Island hiding from I/O. Not only are they hiding out, they’re defrosting and training the Gen-Active kids that Ivana put on ice as Project Genesis was falling apart. Bliss got sick of all that and decided to bounce and tour the world while Ivana and Threshold trained the DV8 kids. Not sure if she was specifically searching the Gen13 kids out with her little “Gen-Active finder device” or she was just looking for other Gen-Actives for the fun of it. Either way, she ended up in Italy just in time to save Bobby’s bacon.

Bobby and Bliss team up to save the rest of the Gen13 kids. As luck would have it Rainmaker ended up falling down a manhole into the sewer as that building was falling down around her. With her safe, she joins the rescue squad to go and find Grunge, Roxy, and Caitlin. The trio ends up breaking into the Order of the Cross by way of the men’s room. Meanwhile, Roxy and Grunge manage to break free due to getting into an actual fight, even though Caitlin thinks it’s a diversion at first. Speaking of fights, Bliss and Rainmaker can’t stop their own bickering for a second, even when taking down a hefty group of the Order’s men. That’s commitment to an argument!

Both teams meet up and are trying to find a way out of this mess. Caitlin is accessing all of their files and is trying to get to more of their top secret ones, but keeps getting blocked. As luck would have it, Bliss knows that Ivana has backdoors in just about every computer network ever created! Bliss gets Caitlin where she needs to be and gets a compliment from Caitlin at the same time. Caitlin then threatens to upload all of the Order of the Cross’s secret information to the public. Since the Order has secrets they’d rather keep to themselves, they let the kids go.

The Gen13 kids, plus Bliss get a private jet from the Vatican to get them back to Cali. While the team is celebrating another win, Bobby and Bliss share a few tender moments near the back of the plane. However; Bliss being Bliss just can’t be pinned down, and opens the jet door and leaps out of it with a parachute, as if to prove to Bobby, you can never predict some girls.

Continuity Corner:

• We’re finally following up on where Ivana, Threshold, and Bliss have been up to since the end of “Gen13” volume one issue 5.
• We initially see an unnamed DV8 member in the VR training. We don’t see her in the training session itself, but afterward, stuck in her VR suit. This would later be retconned to have been Freestyle, and it was explained that she so underwhelmed Ivana she got put back on ice.
• One of the files that Caitlin threatened to release from the Order of the Cross was Project Lazurus. I literally cannot remember if that ever comes up again. To tell the truth, I sure wish it would’ve along with more appearances by the Centurions.
• I really liked the direction that this book was taking Bliss in, but it wasn’t much longer before she went back to being the super crazy chick she used to be. Of course, there may be a narrative reason for return to nutso-land. You know, with her getting kind of possessed by a Kindred lizard-person. See “DV8” issue 26 for more details.

NEXT: “Deathblow” volume one issues 20 and 21 by Brandon Choi, Trevor Scott and Tom Joyner

“Team 7 : Dead Reckoning” 1 – 4

this entry covers “Team 7 : Dead Reckoning” (aka Team 7 series 3) issues 1 – 4

Here it is the final series of Team 7… kinda. More on that later, but first up; Lynch finally loses that pesky eye! So, there we go, one Wildstorm Universe mystery totally solved! Unfortunately this series is a bit of a letdown because it moves so fast and so herky jerky in time that it seriously could’ve been at least 2 if not 3 different mini-series. The biggest problem is that we have no sense of time outside of flashbacks to Team 7’s final mission.

The team’s final mission is a trip to Leningrad to rescue a young scientist who is at work for a superhuman program in Russia. This is the program that was set up by the Old Russian dude on crutches that bought it in the last “Team 7” series. When Cray, Slayton & Zig Zag took care of Old Dude, Fatty & Girl in Cambodia it more or less wiped out the fruits of the Russian superhuman program. Now the Russians are trying to get back in the game and it is up to our old buddies in Team 7 (minus Dane who was banished to Level 9 at the end of series 2) to stop those Evil Ruskies and gain a brilliant scientific mind in the process. Of course the mission goes pear-shaped almost immediately.

First things first, Team 7 finds Russia’s one new super-powered being and Lynch takes it on to give the rest of the team time to find the young scientist. Lynch is using all the psi-power he can muster to fight this being. The being is kicking Lynch’s ass, and Lynch tries to pour it on as much as he can to fight back. The drawback is that Lynch’s psionic powers are creating such a pressure on his skull that Lynch knows that he has to tear out his own eye to release a torrent of a psi-blast to take on his enemy. Time being of the essence, and with Lynch literally being the Clint Eastwood of the WildStorm Universe, he goes for it, explodes the other dude’s head and then passes out while the rest of the team meets their objective. While the team his having better luck, they certainly aren’t all that happy.

The team easily finds the man they’re after, a man by the name of Dbovchek, who wants to defect to America with all his scientific knowledge. They grab him, wrap him in the flag of the Soviet Union, grab Lynch and get the hell out of there. One twist, now that Lynch is down for the count Slayton is in charge and this pretty much pisses off the rest of the team, primarily Cash, who thinks he should be in charge. They rest of them don’t like Slayton either, but Slayton doesn’t care. He has secret orders and those orders are to get rid of Dbovchek when he has a chance. He sees his chance when Team 7, after a harrowing chase through the sewers of Leningrad, is being airlifted to safety. This is when Slayton shoves Dbovchek out the door of the helicopter to his death. Cash tries to save him, but has no luck. Why would Slayton do what he did? Because the powers that be want to keep the Cold War running, and a man like Dbovchek on either side threatens that balance. Who would give Slayton that kind of side mission? You guessed it, Miles Craven!

Ok, go back and re-read those last two paragraphs up there, go ahead, I’ve got time. Ok, you back, realize that those paragraphs, that single mission in the USSR, take place via flashbacks throughout the four issue run. You might think to yourself “What? But the actions of that mission inform the whole rest of the series, how can we get a feeling of what is going on when we don’t know how that mission resolved?” And I’d say to you “You’re damn right!” Reading this is kind of like a fever dream, a lot of things happening at once and you’re not sure how it folds altogether in a single satisfying story. Well, it doesn’t, but the structure is only half of the problem, the rest is a lack of year sign posting on the story in progress as well as trying to squeeze in a bunch of references to the WildStorm Universe at large.

Alright, back to that evil bastard Craven. Apparently when the most recent Presidential Administration took charge they reinstated Craven back into his former job as head of I.O. The members of Team 7 are very upset that Craven is their boss once again and most of them quit Team 7 and I.O. in protest, just like at the end of the first series. Much like that time when most of them quit Lynch, Slayton and Cray stay with I.O.. Cash and Callahan both quit I.O. and end up going to work for other military agencies. While Chang and Fairchild also quit I.O. they both go back to work for I.O. at some point. I’m not sure when, as we see them quit, but then we see them working for I.O. again, so without any more information (like when things are happening) it gets a bit confusing. Dane remains locked up down on Level 9 of I.O. and is starting to get along with his C.H.U.D.-like roommates down there.

Now, as we’re moving quickly through the late ‘70s we’re also starting to get more connections to the WildStorm Universe that is occurring, more or less, in the real-time of the ‘90s. We find out about Callahan’s first wife who he knocked up. When she had her baby the doctor, under orders from Craven, told Callahan both his wife and his baby died. Craven wanted to raise this Gen-Factored baby for his own (evil) ends. Callahan’s wasn’t nearly as passed out as the doctor things, and she gets wise to things, knocks out the doctor, takes her baby and high tails it to an Indian reservation in Arizona where her family lives and convinces her uncle to raise it. Thus we see the secret history of Sarah Rainmaker of Gen13. We see Lynch pissing off either his wife or Christy Blaze, not quite sure which, with his suicidal actions. Cray, under Craven’s direction finds and kills the man supposedly responsible for the death of his parents, which we’ll find out more about later in the “Fire from Heaven” crossover story. Slayton almost biffs a mission in Germany and we see that Craven wants him to infiltrate the U.N.s emerging super-group as a spy for him and I.O.. While Slayton initially balks at the idea, he eventually decides to sign up for Stormwatch anyway. We also see baby Grunge as well as baby Threshold and Bliss when we check in on Callahan and his new wife. Heck, there’s even passing mention of former Team 7 members Diaz, Johnson, MacNamara and Rhodes, but oddly nothing on Breckmann. But what of Dane?

Dane, mind-wiped and all from the Old Russian in series 2 is locked on Level 9, and has been getting brainwashed by his buddies there. He knows he can break free with their help. He also knows that when he breaks free he should warn his friends; because somehow Dane knows that Craven is after all of their kids. How does he gather his best buds back to I.O. to tell them this? He makes them glow. They all come running, and Cray brings along Zig Zag who was just getting settled in at college. Dane busts loose with his Level 9 buds, Team 7 takes care of them, the armed forces of I.O. show up, Zig Zag scares the hell out of them, most of the team then make their escape with a Team 7 members left standing around with Craven. The Team 7 members that ran off are all the parents (Callahan, Chang, Fairchild and Lynch) along with Cash, because he just plain ole hates Craven. Dane is passed out on the ground and Slayton knocks out both Zig Zag and Cray to join Dane.

This is pretty much how it ends, Zig Zag is now in service of Craven and I.O. along with Cray. Slayton is working for the U.N. and Stormwatch, but is spying for I.O.. Callahan, Chang, Fairchild and Lynch want to protect their children and Cash says he has an idea, but first, get all the kids into hiding. Where do we go from here? Well, it’s going to take even more time for that story to be told. We have to wait until the first issue of “Gen13” to start to put it together, and that isn’t too long, but for all the real answers we have to wait until the “Gen12” series which is so much farther down the line. Why not review it next? Well, because unlike the “Team 7” series, the “Gen12” series is told in flashback to an investigative government agent while he is dealing with the after effects of “Fire from Heaven.” So I can’t get ahead without spoiling too damn much, besides, it really is worth the wait! Oh, and no, we never really find out how Dane gets better enough to kick ass leading Wetworks, so don’t expect to ever really solve that mystery.

Next Week : “WildStorm Winter Special : Deathblow Gets Dusted” Preview by Allen Warner, Carlos D’Anada and Carrie Strachan