“Hazard” issues 5 – 7

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

Alright let’s get back to “Hazard” where we find our friend Alex fighting against the clock to find Dr. D’Oro and get these damn nanobots out of him! D’Oro is out on an old oil platform off the coast of Los Angeles. How’d Alex find that out? Why his assistant Carolyn put it together! Smart one she is, he’s lucky to have her around. Once Alex finds Dr. D’Oro to confront him, he finds that D’Oro and Johnny Pepper are conspiring to dropping nano-tech on all of LA so they can control everyone like D’Oro can control Alex’s life. Alex gets smart and knows there would need to be some kind of transmitter to control everything, so he goes about destroying that before blowing up the whole platform with Dr. Doro still on it.

After an 8 hr swim back to shore Alex is pretty sure that it’s his last day on Earth, so let’s make it count. Without Dr. D’Oro’s nano-tech, Johnny Pepper’s ability to overthrow the current mafia in LA, run by a man named Vince Carbonaro, is in jeopardy, so Johnny orders hits on Carbonaro’s men. This doesn’t sit well with Carbonaro and he get his men fitted with some tech that syncs several men up at once in awesome tech suits, and sends them after Pepper. How does our hero Alex figure into it? Well, Pepper informs his men to kill his girlfriend Madison if anything happens to him, and Madison calls Alex to come save her because they are pretty smitten with each other. For now, to save Madison, Alex needs to save Johnny Pepper.

While Carbonaro’s men are quickly, and ruthlessly taking out Pepper’s men Alex is formulating a plan. He’s starting to see how they’re synced up with each other, and he figures there has to be something that is relaying information from one person to another. He guessed that one of Carbonaro’s men is acting as a relay server for the others. After taking him down Alex figures that Johnny Pepper’s men can take care of the rest as they no longer have an advantage. Alex then finds Pepper, instructs him to fly the both of them to Nevada to get Madison, then to let him and Madison leave. After a few punches Pepper begrudgingly agrees, Alex gets Madison and starts the drive home, hoping that at Midnight his time doesn’t run out.

Would you look at this! Either Dr. D’Oro was lying to Alex, didn’t really understand his technology, or Alex managed to do something to keep from dying after 2 weeks. Way to go Alex! Now it’s time to go save your assistant, Carolyn’s church which is on fire. Who set it on fire? It was two members of a hate group called the Aryan Militia, but getting the blame is former StormWatch operative and drunken mess Prism. Prism really managed to fuck up his life. He got a portion if his severance stolen, then he managed to lose all his StormWatch credentials, which means no access to U.N. housing, thus he’s homeless, and he’s completely forgotten how to get in proper contact with anyone in the StormWatch bureaucracy to get set up again. He made the choice to be an alcoholic, be homeless as well as be a warmer place and that’s how he ended up drunk and homeless in Los Angeles. He had a run in with the firestarters and is freaking out using his powers in proximity to the church. So, while the cops are swarming around seeing Prism blast off his light powers not knowing how to take him down Alex shows up. It’s Carolyn’s church after all, that makes it personal.

It’s no doubt that Alex is able to subdue Prism in little time allowing the fire department to roll in and save what they can of the church. But there’s the matter of the Aryan Brotherhood that still needs to be dealt with, and Alex and Prism are the men to do the job. While the Aryan Militia are ready to kill the two men for starting the fire, reason being that they brought police attention to the group, Alex won’t let that happen as he believes the men need to go to court for their crime. Which is noble, but as the leaders of the Brotherhood try to get away Alex manages to crash their plane killing them… so that’s a hell of a moral line you straddle there Alex! In the end the day is saved, Prism is arrested until the police can work out the entirety of the church burning, Carolyn still has Alex’s back, and Madison and Alex are together and happy.

Continuity Corner:

• Sad to see the downfall of Prism, but man he really managed to mess up any avenue he could to save himself. I can understand his feelings of worthlessness and directionless leading to his drinking, but also getting so far gone as to lose his access to StormWatch is just so sad.
• We won’t see Alex again anytime soon. In fact we don’t see him referenced at all until “WildCats” volume five issue 22 where he is listed as a hero left on Earth that would be able to help get society righted. So hey, that means he survived the 2006 reboot as well as Armageddon. Turns out those nanobots were worth it!
• In the letters pages it was teased that Alex may return in another book, and sadly that never happened. Also in the letters pages of “Wynonna Earp” it was suggested that she had an ex-boyfriend in the WildStorm Universe… was her ex Alex? Was it? This has been bothering me since I thought of it.

NEXT: “StormWatch” volume one issues 39 and 40 by Warren Ellis, Tom Raney, Pete Woods, and Randy Elliot

“Hazard” issues 1 – 4

This entry covers “Hazard” issues 1 through 4 by “Hazard” Jeff Mariotte, Roy Allan Martinez, Gerry Alanguilan and Edgar Tadeo w/ some help from Whilce Portacio

So covering this book is odd. Odd, because it is only tangentially related to the overall WildStorm Universe / Story, but certainly has its roots in it and also because it leaves no lasting relevancy. I know it is hard for a new book to make an impact, and not everything thrown at the wall sticks, but this might be the first big “failure” that I’m covering here at Weathering WildStorm, so lock-in, it’s an interesting ride.

At the start of the first issue, we are immediately met with the star of the book, a bounty hunter by the name Alex Hutton. Alex is in Vegas hunting down some gangsters for information, and when he catches up with them they are very surprised to see him. Why you ask? Because while hunting down a bail jumping gangster named Leo Kyle things go all sorts of wrong for Alex, and all these gangsters were there and saw when said things went wrong. You see, Kyle is friends with a gang boss by the name of Johnny Pepper and when Alex goes to find Kyle at Pepper’s dessert estate, Pepper’s men get the best of Alex. They incapacitate Alex with the help of some Hunter-Killers and then ship him off to Gamorra as a guinea pig for a doctor by the name of Emilio D’Oro.

When Alex comes to on Gamorra he’s informed that he’s been pumped full of nanobots, bots that will make him so much stronger than before. In Dr. D’Oro’s words, Alex is now a superassassin. He’s got crazy great vision, a little bit quicker, and a hell of a lot stronger! But D’Oro isn’t dumb, he’s put in a kill switch, for which Alex will need to see the doctor at least once every two weeks to keep from dying. In the short term the doctor can also inflict pain on to Alex, so you know, that sucks. Before Dr. D’Oro can get Alex, or as D’Oro calls him “Hazard,” to do a damn thing there’s a bunch of earthquakes that start to crumble Dr. D’Oro’s lab. D’Oro gets away, but not before seeing that Alex made it out alive as well.

While we don’t see Alex making his way back to America, we do see him once he’s here, and that’s where we started, in Las Vegas with him scaring the be-jebus out of Leo Kyle just by being alive. Alex wants to know how to get ahold of Dr. D’Oro, and Kyle has no idea other than to go ask Johnny Pepper. Yeah, back to that guy. Alex goes after Pepper at his compound and comes up short. Other than a bunch of fighting, all Alex manages to do is meet a feisty red-head and piss Pepper of more because Pepper doesn’t know how to find D’Oro any more either. Sucks to be Alex Hutton.

So while all this is going on we also are privy to a few subplots as well that come into focus soon. The first is that Alex has an assistant named Carolyn, and Carolyn is a widow. Carolyn’s husband was a cop, and she’s just starting to date his old partner Ollie, the partner is the one who killed Carolyn’s husband and covered it up. Luckily Alex has a buddy on the force named Bratton, and he’s is zeroing in on the proof of Ollie being a murderer. We also find out about two young super-powered robbers by the names of Nitro Grrl and Doctor Shock. They’ve been robbing their way across the South West and now they’re in Los Angeles (by the way, Alex is based out of L.A. but he spends so much time outside of it, it’s easy to forget.) The latest target of Nitro Grrl and Doctor Shock is an electronics store that happens to have a large safe in the back. What’s in that safe? A ton of money. Who’s money? Johnny Pepper’s, because he’s been using the electronics shop as a way to launder that money! Uh-oh!

Alright, I skimmed over something earlier, and that’s how Alex got put on the trail of Leo Kyle in the first place which lead to all this… well you know, mess. It was a fellow bailsman by the name of Al. While it didn’t seem all that important then it turns out to be important when we learn that it was Al who sold Alex out to Dr. D’Oro! After exacting some revenge on Al, and taking the money that Dr. D’Oro had paid Al, Alex gets a number from Al that could put him on a new lead.

So while Alex is using this number to find a connection to Dr. D’Oro, Johnny Pepper has found Nitro Grrl and Doctor Shock and made them a deal. The deal is that they have to hunt down and take out Alex. These two aren’t the smartest, they’re just kids, and they do have a bit of trouble keeping track of him. Hell, he even manages to sneak up behind their car and flatten a tire! Alex gets away for a bit, just enough time to get a call from Bratton telling Alex he has the proof on Ollie, Carolyn’s husband’s killer, and to meet him at the pier to find out more. While this is happening Carolyn gets kidnapped by Ollie.

So it’s all coming to a head here, Alex meets up with Bratton under the pier. It turns out that Bratton is as dirty as Ollie and it’s all a setup. Damn! They are going to kill Carolyn unless Alex gives himself up. While Alex is preparing to let himself be shot, Nitro Grrl and Doctor Shock finally catch up to Alex. The involvement of Carolyn makes them each think twice about what to do, but Nitro Grrl blows up the pier anyway because Carolyn isn’t near there. It’s a good enough distraction, and Doctor Shock manages to take out Bratton. Now Alex knows that the kids are here to kill him, and despite them murdering Bratton he isn’t sure if they will kill him next or Ollie, and Ollie is ready to kill Carolyn. Alex makes a tough choice and shoots Doctor Shock to prevent his own death, leaving him to save Carolyn. Only Carolyn doesn’t need saving as Nitro Grrl takes out Ollie. But there’s no time to slow down, the clock is ticking on Alex’s life. He’s got about a week to find Dr. D’Oro so that he can continue to live!

Continuity Corner:

• In “Hazard” issue 2 we find out that everything that occurred on Gamorra and his nanotech implants was four days ago, that’s why we put this so soon after the conclusion of “Fire with Heaven”
• The reason we truck on through the first four issues is that they are occurring pretty much over the next few days. By issue 4 Alex confirms that it has been three more days getting and he is through his first week, and needing to get to D’Oro soon! When we catch back up with Alex is “Hazard” issue 5 we find him with just 28 hours left to live, so that affords us a decent break to catch up with other books.
• The end of issue 1 and the beginning of issue 2 are a flashback that occurs during the “Fire from Heaven” storyline. News about Kaizen Gamorra comes to Dr. D’Oro at one point, and the earthquakes caused by the Moon are ultimately what saves Alex.
• The number that Al gives Alex comes in handy off-panel, and we’ll find out more about it and the results it got in issue 5.
• The “feisty red-head” as I called her, comes back in issue 6. She probably would’ve been a main cast character if the book continued for longer than 7 issues.
• I wish we could see more from Nitro Grrl. It’s a shame that Doctor Shock is dead, but damn I love those two dopey kids!

NEXT: “Black Ops” issues 3 – 5 by Shon Bury, Dan Norton, and Sandra Hope

“Grifter” Vol. 1 issues 7 – 10

This entry covers “Grifter” volume one, issues 7 through 10 by Steven T. Seagle, Ryan Benjamin, Cedric Nocon, Roy Martinez, Chuck Gibson, Sandra Hope, Danny Bulanadi and Gerry Alanguilan.

Our old buddy Cole Cash finds himself in Los Angeles. In fact, he’s dropping into the ocean just off of Venice Beach. What’s with this dude and falling into the ocean? Cole comes to and makes friends with a bum named Eddie. While Cole’s getting to know his new buddy a strange handoff is going on in the background, and it isn’t going well.

The handoff is a book. And the book details Los Angeles’ mayor John Thomley’s mismanagement of the subway system fund. A former assistant to the mayor is selling it to the man running against Thomley, Mario Reynaldo, so Reynaldo has blackmail on Thomley, hoping to get him to drop out of the upcoming election. Reynaldo sends a street gang, the Carnivores, who work for him to pick up the book. To stop the exchange of the book, Thomley hires mercenary Serge to snag the book back for him. With all this going on the exchange is getting pretty violent, that’s where Cole steps in.

Not that Cole does a whole lot of good either. He pretty much gets hit with some kind of poisoned bullet that causes him to hallucinate a whole bunch. First, he starts to hallucinate his fight with Serge as a crazy wild west scene. Serge eventually sees that Eddie the bum has ended up with the book as all hell was breaking loose, and manages to get it from Eddie. At the point Eddie goes to hide, Serge takes off to return the book to Thomley and Cole starts to hallucinate seeing Zealot.

Why Zealot? Well, Prayer is also in LA, only she’s looking for vengeance. She’s a tough no nonsense kinda chick who knows her way around a battle. You can see how he could get them confused if he was way way out of his mind. What is Prayer doing here? Turns out Prayer’s sister was an assistant to Mayor Thomley and they had a child out of wedlock together. Thomley then had his assistant killed and aimed to have his daughter in hiding. Prayer means to find this girl, her niece, and goddaughter, and give her a better life. Oh, and Reynaldo already had a reporter killed and has kidnapped this little girl too so he’ll have more leverage over Thomley. Reynaldo, it’s called overkill, but you can’t blame a man for having some backup contingencies.

With the book out of the picture, Prayer goes hunting down Serge and find out what is in the book that Thomley is trying to suppress. Maybe there’s information about her niece in it. Turns out Eddie pulled a fast one and exchanged the much-wanted book with a bible. This amuses no one and serves to piss off Thomley and Serge as they meet up and discover this. It also angers Prayer who is watching this exchange from afar.

Meanwhile, Cole stops seeing things but forgets who he is. He is dragged from where all the action went down and he wakes up in the lair of the Carnivores. He eventually makes it through their initiation and becomes a full-fledged member of the gang. The gang then starts to get ready for the next day, where they will crash the Mayoral debate in Santa Monica and the opening of the new SeaWatch base and present the public with Manda, Thomley’s daughter. While prepping for the day Cole creates a mask… his Grifter mask, and as soon as he puts it on he is in his right head again. Now he just has to find a way out of this mess.

Everything comes to a head at SeaWatch. Thomley has hired his own street gang, the Predators, and tasks them with keeping the Carnivores for trying anything during the debate. We have most of the Carnivores, with Cole and Manda, breaking into the SeaWatch base via the sewer lines. There’s also Serge, now joined by his large pal, Mahkinot who’re are pissed off at Thomley for stiffing them because, well, they didn’t bring him the book they were hired to. Honestly, I’m with Thomley on this one. Oh, and Prayer is there too, to assassinate Thomley. But before everything went down, Eddie approached SeaWatch and met one of the directors of the research project, and handed her the book everyone has been after.

It becomes just a huge mess of violence that ends in both the Mayor and his opponent dead, with only a week until elections. And almost all the gang members in the Carnivores and the Predators dead as well. Manda is saved by Cole when the two of them almost drowned because they were on a submarine as it was launching accidentally from SeaWatch. We are left to assume that Serge and Mahkinot moved on, Prayer took Manda to care for, and the SeaWatch director that was handing around Eddie the Bum presented the book of Thomley’s misdeeds to the media.

Alright, that last part is pretty much a fact. The media suddenly seems to know everything about Manda being Thomley’s illegitimate kid. The Los Angeles police have publicly stated that they’d like to talk to Cole, AKA the masked man that saved Manda, just to see how he was involved in the event. Cole decides to time to start moving towards home and gets a bus headed to Las Vegas. Hey, East is East buddy, and New York is a lot East of Los Angeles, Cole needs to get moving.

Continuity Corner:

• We last saw Prayer when Grifter was fresh off the WildC.A.T.s team in “Grifter: Sneak Peak” from Overwatch’s Fan issue 1.
• The lines that Prayer says as Zealot mostly work for both characters, neat.
• And even though we know better, Cole still thinks that Zealot is dead and gone since “WildStorm Rising” issue 2.
• Serge and Mahkinot will next pop up in “Backlash” 12 – 14, even though I think those books may’ve been published earlier. For either appearance it doesn’t really matter which you read first, I just wanted to get caught up with Cole because we haven’t seen him in so long.
• At the SeaWatch opening, the local press talks about the trouble that StormWatch is going through. That being the whole SkyWatch crashing and the U.N. being partially destroyed.
• Seeing SeaWatch made me realize that there is no real Aquaman/Namor analogue in the WildStorm Universe. Sure, we have characters with water-based powers, and there’s even Atlantis where Slayton’s pop was king. But no real “Lord of the Seas” kinda guy.

Where to find this story:

• Comixology: “Grifter” Volume One: #7, #8, #9 & #10

NEXT: “StormWatch” volume one issues 28 and 29 by Jeff Mariotte, Barbara Kesel, Ron Lim, Mike S. Miller, Robert Jones and Randy Elliot

“Wetworks” Vol. 1 issues 12 – 15

This entry covers “Wetworks” volume 1 issues 12 – 15 by Francis Takenaga, Whilce Portacio, Jonathan Peterson, John Ruzum, Tom Raney, Terry Shoemaker, Ryan Odagawa, Roy Martinez, Rick Bryant, Sal Regla, JD, Brad Vancata, John Nyberg, Gerry Alanguilan, Danny Bulanadi, Randy Elliott and Jeff Whiting. The best reading order would be issues 12 and 13 in full, followed by the main story in issue 14, then skipping to issue 15 and reading both the main and backup story “Fly on the Wall” before getting back to issue 14’s backup story “Fieldtest” AKA “Fire from Heaven Prelude.”

The team wants to save Claymore, but no one has any ideas on how to do that. Whatever Drakken tossed at him during their last big battle, really seemed to do a number on the poor guy. The team is running out of steam, not knowing what to do. Hell, even Mother-One is only sleeping a single hour a day and is trying to use all her computery bits to figure out the mystery of Claymore’s disease. Then, suddenly the whole team has a dream. A crazy dream. A dream about a pyramid. A pyramid with werewolf statues standing outside of it on each corner. Because they all had this dream, they figure it must mean something. For now, that’s on hold as they head out on their next mission.

What’s the mission? Seems like the dwarves and the little hippo dude Night Tribes are out in the Marshall, Minnesota aiming to cause some trouble. This gets shut down pretty quickly, and we even get to see Dozer in a lot of action. Of course, he damages his new robotic outfit so much as he and the team take out the threat, that he has to have Waering’s people get him back to base separately from the rest of the team. Which means Dozer misses out on the next big batch of fun. That fun is trying to find out where the dream pyramid is!

So yeah, the team flies from Minnesota all the way to Egypt! As Grail says to the team “Egypt is a large place” how the hell are they going to find a single pyramid amongst all that sand? Lucky for everyone, Mother-One has a feeling, a feeling that will tell her where the pyramid is! And low do they find it! Not as easily as you’d think, apparently it was hidden by a cloaking device from the naked eye, but that won’t stop our Wetworks team, boy howdy!

The team get in the pyramid and find a sarcophagus with a mummy Egyptian prince in it. How do we know all this? Well, we find it out later when it’s dying golden symbiote starts to communicate with Dane’s. Pretty intense story, the prince was a werewolf. Not sure where he got a symbiote, but he did, so good for him! Turns out he died of the same thing that is affecting Claymore back home! We find most of this out while the team is battling some rock monsters in the pyramid. It takes some paying attention, but the team figures out how to defeat them. They then head home, now with the knowledge they need to defeat Claymore’s infection.

It is a tough job, but the team ends up creating what is needed to cure Claymore. When I say tough job, I mean that there is there is considerable damage to Waering’s facility, the team, and Dane in particular. There’s also some business with his arm splitting open, and the infection being alive and then quarantined, but I really didn’t follow it exactly. I mean, hell, it is drawn way awesome, but I don’t get EXACTLY what went on.

The Blood Queen is out whooping it up in NYC, killing folks left and right. She keeps carving a serpent in the chests of her victims. Long-suffering Persephone has already had an ass full of the Blood Queen’s nonsense but has to take it in stride, as it is her royal duty to stick with the notorious T.B.Q. Queeny is just reveling in the murder and mayhem she’s causing only pausing for a bit to talk about her love for Dane. I’m pretty sure this is the first indication that the Blood Queen personally knows anyone on the Wetworks team other than their benefactor Mr. Waering.

Time for a training session with Dane! And Dane tells them they all suck. He’s schooling the whole team left and right. He’s worried that they’ve started to rely too much on the power they’ve gotten from the symbiotes and are getting lazy. He orders more and more training sessions to get the team back up to snuff. We get a touching (get it) moment between Mother-One and Grail, we see Jester once again unwittingly use his power, and we Dane confused, hearing a voice in his head. The voice is the Blood Queens, and we all know, that lady ain’t right in the head! Look out, Dane!

Well, Dane isn’t feeling well, so he goes on a break. Of course, this isn’t going to be a joyous vacation for him to think and collect himself. Nope, poor Dane stops at a diner and is accosted by a creature trying to steal his golden symbiote! The creature was once a man named Paul, whose soul was bound to his body even after he was killed. He must have some kind of low-level psi-powers as he can command flys to cover his body and keep he decaying body mobile. He made a mistake that afternoon going after Dane, and may’ve paid the price. At the end of their battle all that is left if Paul’s skull, still containing Paul’s eternal soul.

Time for a training session without Dane! And Waering tells them they all suck. He has a point, without Dane around the team is coming across as next to useless. OK, it isn’t that bad, but it really seems that Mother-One is the only team member to get how serious the team needs to get if they are to function without Dane leading them. Without Dane you say? Yup! Mother-One is worried about his health and wants to be prepared if worse comes to worse and Dane isn’t around. Well, where’s Dane this now? Turns out he’s made it to Battery Park in NYC at the Korean War memorial, where he runs into his old friend Michael Cray.

Continuity Corner:

• One of the reasons for the unorthodox reading order is this: issues 12, 13 and the main story from 14 all concern the teams desire to cure Claymore. The backup story in 14 ends with Dane meeting up with Michael Cray, whom he pretty much stays with up through the events of “Fire from Heaven.” In my head, it makes no sense for him leave Cray to go back across the country to do a training exercise with the team in the “Fieldtest” story and then leave them to meet right back up with Cray again. If we read the book in the order I’ve laid out we get the entire arc of the team saving Claymore, then Dane leads a training session, followed by seeing Dane on the road in “Fly on the Wall.” After that, we see the team do a training session without Dane while he meets up with Cray for “Deathblow” volume one, issue 22 and next big “WildStorm” cross-over. It has a better narrative flow, but I’ll admit, it’s a bit of a tortured order to have things in.
• Also, at the end of the training session in issue 15 we see Dane drop his gold. After the events of “Deathblow” volume one issue 22 he can’t really do that due to the lack of Gen-Factor in his system. The symbiote is the only thing holding him together at that point, sooooooo… my crazy order stands! Suck it, doubters!
• Alright, I’ll admit it, maybe “Fly on the Wall” doesn’t go here. I just thought that it would be pointless to pull it out, as we know that Dane is on the move, so why not. But frankly, I just can’t think of anywhere that is a desert between where Waering’s place is and New York City. Then again, it seems like he’s kind of wandering in this story, so maybe it wasn’t exactly a straight line from point A to point B in this case.
• It’s a bit of a retcon, but we’ll find that the Blood Queen has been messing with Dane for years in the pages of “Gen12.” Issue 15 of “Wetworks” volume one was our first hint of something going on between the two of them.
• You’d think the Blood Queen killing folks in NYC would gain the attention of some of the other New York City-based WildStorm characters. I guess StormWatch is busy rebuilding and the New WildCats are trying to get themselves established keeping them away from the action. I guess the real question is, where the hell is Union?

NEXT: “Deathblow” volume one issue 22 by Brandon Choi, Tom Joyner and Trevor Scott