this entry covers “WetWorks” Vol. 1 issues 4 through 7.
The thing about “WetWorks” is, is that it isn’t as ingrained into the greater WildStorm Universe as the other titles, especially the launch titles. Sure, Dane was a member of Team 7, but considering that he also seems like the victim of a mind wipe/personality overhaul, it comes off as tenuous at best. I know I’ve said this before, but these issues kind of get to the heart of it. The WetWorks team is so busy hunting down the Night Tribes that they don’t have time for dealing with the craziness of the Daemonites… usually… but when a certain vampire wants to speak to a certain Daemonite Lord… well I’m getting a bit ahead of myself.
Deep below San Fransisco is a massive base owned by Armand Waering, and it is home to his personal new team. They were once Team 7 Jr., but now they’re WetWorks. Or that’s what we the readers call them, do they ever call themselves that? I mean, sometimes the WildC.A.T.s called themselves that, but not often. And for that matter did Gen13 ever call themselves that at all? I certainly don’t recall that. Team names in the WSU; sometimes they’re not used. Anyway, down deep in this underground lair is Dozer who is growing seriously huge, so huge the guy is confined to this basement level while Waering’s people are trying to figure out how to help him. Grail is chilling with Dozer telling him that he symbiotes are just giving each one of them what they really want. He suggests that Dozer just aways wanted to be big, just like Tom Hanks. But wait, it’s time for a mission!
The mission takes us South America, near the Columbian/Amazonas border. There’s a lab there, and it seems that Drakken and his men are meeting up there with a mysterious figure. WetWorks are out to get Drakken so they’re on their way! Waering and co. weren’t the only one to get the message of Drakken’s whereabouts, Miles Craven does too! Thing is, homeboy knows who Drakken is meeting with, a Daemonite Lord named Defile. Santini (yay Santini!) suggests taking some Black Razors and blasting the hell out of the place, but Craven says he has plans, his puppets will move as he wishes. I’m not sure what Craven’s ultimate plan was. We have the bait for both WetWorks and WildC.A.T.s meeting up. Did he plan for a huge fight? To take out one team or the other? Not sure as to what Craven wanted to happen, because as soon as WetWorks starts shooting Defile takes off, and as soon as the WildC.A.T.s show up, it’s enough of a distraction for Drakken to escape. With both of their enemies gone, the fight between the two teams dissipates quickly and the ‘C.A.T.s are exiting right as Cash starts to recognize Dane.
Alright, following that mess it’s time for leave of action! Grail visits his ex-fiance, lets her think he’s an angel, coming to say goodbye one last time. Jester and Claymore go get drunk, and while sobering up the next morning, Claymore drops a coffee mug into Jester! Waering finally reveals to the reader that he’s a werewolf, and also the leader of all werewolves know as the Jaquar.
On the vampire side of things we see the Blood Queen as she is about to address her loyal pointy toothed subjects. Seems like every 50 years or so she does this. But this year, her brother Drakken attacks her men! Oh no! He’s leading a coup to take over the vampire nation! Waering gets wind of all this and is fearful that is Drakken wins, that means the current truce between the Night Tribes and Humanitiy may be broken, he of course blames Dane and the rest of his team. Drakken in the end does convince many of the vampire families that he should be the one in charge… this does not look good for WetWorks
Also not looking good for WetWorks is that Mother-One is talking to entity known only as “Mother” who doesn’t seem to be on Waering’s side. We also see that Pilgrim finds that when she’s going undercover for trackib, she goes deep undercover, like invisible and stuff. This comes in handy as all of sudden on a mission an alternate universe version of Pilgrim pops up to attack her. This alternate version of Pilgrim infers that she’s been killing several different version of herself in several different universes, and our Pilgrim is the last to go. She mentions there’s a prize to be had as well, this is kind of reminding me of the movie “the One” in a way. I’d be more sure if I’d seen that movie more than once, and I wasn’t completely intoxicated at the time. Either way, during the fight our Pilgrim accidentally trips a “safety command” that takes both her and alternate Pilgrim back to alternate Pilgrim’s alternate universe. Alternate.
And that’s where they leave the reader. Cliffhanger for sure! Waering unhappy with Dane and the team. Drakken in charge of all the vampires. Mother-One having a mystery friend and Pilgrim so very far from home!
Continuity Corner:
- I guess in reality issues 4 and 5 could come earlier in the sequence and not change too much, I’d put them before “Backlash” issue 1, but I like keeping Slayton’s story arc of hunting down the Daemonite that put Diane in a coma all together.
- To be fair, issues 6 and 7 don’t even need to really be filed together either, just drop them both in sometime before “WildStorm Rising” and you’d be fine continuity wise.
- Another reason I group these issues all together is that we don’t ever get to spend enough time with the “WetWorks” crew due to the high number of team members and the low number of issues coming out. So getting a blast of four that follow a small arc together helps me at least, keep everything and everyone straight.
- Speaking of issues slow to come out, the next issue we meet up with the WetWorks team will be during the “WildStorm Rising” cross over. Yeah, it’s a long time before we see these cats again!
- One last thing about keeping these four issues in a group here, is that we get the canonical first reunoin of Cash and Dane, in “WetWorks” Vol. 1 issues 4 and 5, sure, they re-meet again in that “Deathblow” story that never happens and then once they see each other in “WetWorks” Vol. 1 issue 8, they comment on their meeting in issue 5. Because the “Deathblow” arc never happened we’re clear either way, but them not commenting on “Hey, didn’t I just see you?” in the pages of “Deathblow” seems a bit odd to me. Sure, it doesn’t break anything, or create any kind of big continuity error, but for me it is just a bit cleaner.
- Look, it’s Defile and his rude boy zombie, up to no good as usual.
- Nice touch that when the WildC.A.T.s pop in that Marlowe isn’t there with the team, after all, he quit the team in “WildC.A.T.s” Vol. 1 issue 9.
- At this point in the WSU, I think this is our first “alternate universe” mention. Up until the introduction of the Bleed in “StormWatch” Vol. 2 issue 7 we don’t even get that many of them. We have the ones mentioned by alternate Pilgrim, the Sideways from “Union” Vol. 2 issues 5 and 6, and that’s all I can recall.
- Issue 7 also introduces us the first part in a series of back-ups entitled “the Lone One : a Story Every Vampire Knows.” This series stops and starts as the back-up several times, so I’ll tackle it all a bit later.
NEXT: “Jim Lee’s WildC.A.T.S : Grifter VS. Daemonite” special edition issue 1 by Dan Vado, Terry Shoemaker and John Holdredge
Ugh. Just… I mean… sigh… these three issues… these three damn issues… Ok to be fair issues 9 and 11 are pretty good! I guess it’s just issue 10 that sticks in my craw a bit. To be fair, I’m not against fill-in issues at all… it’s just that this one seemed pointless. Also, it’s not even written by Portacio and/or Takenaga. I understand when Whilce can’t draw fast enough to keep up, that’s fair, but at least keep one of the writers on the book so that it all makes relative sense. As it is, we have such a large story with a lot of moving pieces, then to have issue 10 tossed in the middle of the mix makes everything even more disjointed than it needed to be.
Once the fighting starts Dane and Claymore manage to get pretty close to Drakken, then Drakken pulls out some kind of device and tosses it at Claymore. It flies right into his forehead, sticks there and then makes his symbiote go nuts and is also trying to kill Claymore. This effects Dane’s symbiote and his mind via some crazy psychic feedback. He’s starting to remember back to when Void was telling him that Jester was something other than he seemed. This then turns into a hallucination with Dane and Void merging and having an existential crisis. After freaking out for about a century about how big and empty the universe is, and how we’re all so small, Dane snaps out of it and gets back to the real world. Looks like it’s time to call in Mother-One to save their asses from Drakken and other vampires and have Dozer save the whole team from this entire debacle.
So… um… OK. In the end I guess Wetworks did their job, they killed a lot of vampires, but they didn’t kill Drakken. Drakken killed a lot of everyone, included vampires from his faction, the ones that had saved him from getting killed by werewolves. Drakken’s thingy has left Claymore is hella wounded. A version of Pilgrim pops in and saves Dane’s bacon. The underground city of Dras’adin is starting to crumble. And finally, the Blood Queen is ready to party now that she has no more royal responsibilities and Persephone is all “Oh boy, here we go again” and rolls her deep red eyes.
weathering wildstorm 