“Deathblow” Vol. 1 issues 13 & 14

this entry covers “Deathblow” volume 1 issues 13 and 14

Armand Waering has a problem. He wants to be featured in a comic book, but Whilce Portacio can’t draw “WetWorks” fast enough. He must take drastic measures and get into the pages of “Deathblow!” Also, something about a killer on the loose in Hollywood and the fact that he knows it’s a werewolf. Waering has to take care of this problem but he can’t be seen taking down a fellow werewolf and everyone knows he’s buddy buddy with WetWorks, so he calls Rayna Masters and she gets her best man on it.

Said man is Michael Cray, who is trying to spend some time at the grave of his former wife. This doesn’t last long before Miles Craven sends some goons to try to bring Cray back to I/O once again. He takes out a few, but the final goon is taken out by Rayna because nothing can ever be boring around Cray. She gets him on the next flight to LAX telling him that he’s got a bodyguard gig in the City of Angels.

He’s there to guard a frightened washed up starlet named Caroline Conroy. She’s afraid she’ll be the next victim of the Hollywood Hills Killer, and she thinks having just one bodyguard isn’t enough, so that’s where Cray fits in. He doesn’t really get along with the main guard Tony, but hey, a job is a job. Speaking of a job, as soon as Cray meets Caroline, it’s off to a party, not downtime in this line of work.

Big time Hollywood schmooze fest kinda party. The kind of party where you just might run into the head of a secret society that employs one of your old war buddies. Yup, here’s where Cray runs into Waering for the first time and gets handed the silver bullet. After he downs his Coors Light, Cray also sees that he’s been handed a silver .45 bullet by Waering. As Waering slips back into the shadows we find Caroline arguing with a man. This man turns out to be John Barry, deputy director of the CIA and former boyfriend of Caroline. As Cray talks down Barry, we see another man make some moves on Caroline, a guy who’s just too damn smooth to live.

Who is this smooth ass ladies man? Why it’s Johnny Savoy, the world’s most beloved vampire rockstar! Seriously, if you hadn’t been reading “WetWorks” and paying attention, Savoy being a vampire is a big “what the hell?” when Cray plugs him through the chest a few times later in the night, after the party, outside Caroline’s estate. So yeah, he’s a vampire and that was a hell of a run-on sentence.

Where was I, oh yeah, later that night Cray shoots Savoy a bunch, but it doesn’t kill him. Then they hear gunfire and Caroline screaming. They both rush to the scene to see a man cloaked all in black with night vision goggles and a syringe, along with 2 other similarly clad buddies. Cray takes down the guy with the syringe, and Savoy makes the other two redundant. Caroline lets on that these men are from the CIA, and were sent by Barry to kill her. Why? Because when she was dating Barry she found out he’s a werewolf, and he’ll kill her to keep his secret! Cray isn’t buying this werewolf stuff and Savoy counters with “Hey, come on dude, it’s possible! Check me out, Imma vampire!”

In order to better protect Caroline from Barry and his CIA lackeys, they move the party over to Savoy’s mansion. It’s a sound plan, as the man has two tigers. Again, John Barry’s CIA lackeys show up, this time in white cover-alls, and even Tony the missing bodyguard is there! Feels like we’re headed to the climax. Savoy and Cray still think Barry and the CIA are the bad guys, with Tony working for them. Unfortunately for them, this isn’t the case and a lot of CIA dudes get killed before we find out that Caroline is the werewolf killer. Yup, the werewolf was inside the house the whole time. Cray makes the killing shot and the job, due to the passing of the lady paying the bills, is over.

Barry, Savoy and Cray promise to never tell the world what really happened that night, figuring it’s better to let Hollywood have one more mysterious killer, for tourists to take bus tours about. At Caroline’s funeral Waering shows up to talk to Cray. They exchange a few words and Cray gives Waering back the bullet. It’s a bittersweet ending for this short chapter in Cray’s life, having to shoot someone he really liked due to their inner, unwanted, evil.

Continuity Corner:

• What a “WetWorks” ancillary character heavy issue. The plot was set in motion by Armand Waering and featured Johnny Savoy!
• Another moment of the WildStorm/Top Cow universe connection with Cray running into Stryker from “Cyber Force” in a club.
• When talking to Cray at the club, Waering mentions not getting a chance to thank Cray back in Gamorra. Later on, there are a lot of mentions about some event in Gamorra that members of Team 7 were a part of, currently I’m either forgetting what that is, or they never revealed it. Because right now, I can’t remember a single book that has Cray, Fairchild and Waering all on Gamorra in a flashback.
• The last page mentions Cray going back to New York and Rayna being pissed at Cray for letting Caroline die. More so, as she figures that Caroline was just some kind of pawn for John Barry. Eventually, Savoy sends Rayna some security camera footage of that night, and she never brings the subject up again. I like this ending, but it implies that Cray will be back in New York next issue and this all happened before the next issue begins. However, the next issue is just down the coast in San Diego, which kinda makes this ending feel a little hollow after you hit page one of issue 15.

Where to find these stories:

• Comixology: “Deathblow” vol. 1 issues 13 & 14

NEXT : “Gen13 : Unreal World” issue 1 by Mike Heisler, Humberto Ramos and Troy Hubbs.

“WetWorks” Vol. 1 issues 1 – 3

this entry covers “Wetworks” Vol. 1 issues 1 – 3 and the “Wetworks” back-up story from “WildC.A.T.s : Covert Action Teams” Vol. 1 issue 2.

I’m not going to lie; I was never a “WetWorks” reader growing up. I picked up the first issue when it came out due to curiosity, but it didn’t catch me like the rest of the WildStorm books did. Luckily for me when going to read this, the back issues were pretty damn cheap to find, I guess I’m not the only person that wasn’t too into this series. Oddly, I really dug “WetWorks” Vol. 2 when that came out a decade later, so reading the backstories and origins for some of these characters was kind of fun… kind of. I guess I always regarded the WetWorks team as characters that had a few cross-overs with the normal WildStorm Universe but I didn’t really need to follow them all that closely, more like the “Cyberforce” characters, less like the Savage Dragon.

I’m not even joking when I say that “WetWorks,” while having deep historical ties to the WSU, rarely has anything to do with the rest of the WildStorm books during its Volume 1 run. Aside from Dane we really don’t see much of the other characters outside of their own book. Even during the two big cross-overs “WildStorm Rising” and “Fire from Heaven” the other members of the team aren’t seen much even in crowd shots. Dane, the leader of WetWorks we all know as Jackson Dane from Team 7, so whenever those geezers get back together we know that Dane will have a thing or two to do with that adventure. The WetWorks team is also the modern incarnation of Team 7 at I/O. So yeah, a second Team 7, led by one of the former members. The one that went crazy. This was a good idea.

We don’t know how long this “new” Team 7 has been working for I/O, or for how long Dane has been able to lead a team, or even how long he’s been shaving off that exquisite beard. What we do know is that Miles Craven is sending them all on a mission, a mission to Transylvania. Another mission from Craven, that Craven knows is doomed from the start, much like the first Team 7 mission that we saw over in “Team 7.” The only thing is that this time Craven doesn’t expect the team to survive, in fact he wants to be rid of them, and the targets he sent them after, so he can have those sweet sweet golden symbiotes, that he knows are contained there, for himself. How does he know about the symbiotes? He’s Miles Goddamn Craven; dude knows everything shady going on in the WSU, always, count on it.

Luckily for Dane and the rest of his crew, this mission has another backer and a few mysterious allies. The backer is Mr. Waering of the Waering Institute of Higher Werewolf Learning. Or something like that. He’s a werewolf, but it’s supposed to be a secret for now, even though from his very first line it is obvious that he’s a werewolf. Either way, he’s the one that’s apparently been pulling the strings on Dane’s professional life for a while. He got Dane onto Team 7 (the first or second version, we aren’t told) and made sure that Team 7 would be taking care of this Transylvanian mission. Waering wants Team 7 to find the symbiotes and take control of them, kill all the vampires (duh, the Transylvanians Team 7 were sent out to kill are vampires) and then come work for him. He even installs one of his own people, Mother-One the cyborg, as a pilot of one of the I/O ships.

Team 7 has no idea what is going on, or why some of these vampires are hard to kill, because they don’t know they are vampires yet. After everything that Dane has seen and done he doesn’t think there are vampires? Eh, small quibble, because he and the rest of the team seem to accept that they’re killing vampires pretty damn quickly. But there’s more vampires coming, and Team 7 is running low on fire power. What is there to do? Hey, look at these pretty tubes full of gold liquid! Now, it isn’t Team 7’s initial idea to get those tubes open and dump them on themselves. Nope! Persephone, a vampire from a rival vampire faction, shoots open the glass on one and it gets all over Team 7 member Claymore. The team figures out pretty quickly that this new golden skin is protecting Claymore and they bust open the rest of the tubes to “suit up” and take down the rest of these vamps. See, Persephone is the right hand lady to the Blood Queen, ruler of the vampires, and this Transylvanian faction means to take her power from her to rule the vampire nation. Persephone is sent to make sure the Transylvanian dorks are taken out by Dane’s group, and if the symbiotes are the way to go, so be it. The Blood Queen has been messing with Dane’s mind for years. The book says it has only been 6 years, but from what we later see in “Gen 12” we know that it has been a bit longer than that (unless this book takes place several years earlier than it seems.) So the Blood Queen kind of gets what she wants, her thrall/secret weapon is now in possession of a powerful weapon, which is now on a personal mission to take down other vampires that might challenge her rule.

As all this craziness is going on inside where the symbiotes were stored, outside I/O copters wait for Team 7 to be done with the mission. But like I said earlier, Craven means for this to be Team 7’s final mission, so when Team 7 is exiting the building, Craven tells his men to take out Team 7. This is when Mr. Waering let’s Mother-One know to put his secret plan into action and she shoots down the other I/O helicopters and takes out the I/O agents in hers. She suits up with her own golden symbiote and gets the team out of there to go and meet Mr. Waering and find out his plan for them. Dane really doesn’t trust him all that much, but he’s no worse than his previous employer, so what the hell, we need cash to fight vampires, so no more I/O and Team 7, bring on WetWorks!

The next mission is overly complicated for what is a pretty simple story. Some vampires want to release a virus at a concert that will start to take down humanity. They also hate the Blood Queen. We find that the Blood Queen long ago brokered a truce not only between vampires and humans, but also between the other Night Tribes, including werewolves, trolls and creatures of that nature. Maybe. Sometimes the phrase “the Night Tribes” is used for all those kinds of creatures, sometimes just for vampires and sometimes just for a certain group of vampires. It’s all jumbled up and kind of a mess. Anyway, the reason the “evil” Vampires pick the concert of Johnny Savoy to target is because he is the Blood Queen’s brother, so you know, kill two bats with one stone.

The WetWorks team takes down the bad vamps and become buddies with (and a little star-struck by) Johnny Savoy. The team member Pilgrim is saved by a mystery man going by the name of the Wilder, and we see Mother One kick some ass. Unfortunately the Wetworks team loses two of members; Crossbones and Flattop. The thing about the Wetworks team is that outside of Dane and Mother-One we don’t get to know any of the other characters well enough to care for them. We’ve just lost two of them and you don’t care because there are still so many more. It doesn’t help that they are not too differentiated in look from each other, in or out of gold covering. The team consists of Dane (the leader), Mother-One (the cyborg), Dozer (soon to be the “big guy”), Grail (the ass kicking loner), Jester (the wisecracker), Crossbones (the other guy) and Pilgrim (the girl). I don’t know if it is too many characters, or because this title actually devotes too many pages letting us get to know Mr. Waering and the Blood Queen, that none of the characters come across as deeper than a bowl of soup. Even after reading all the “WetWorks” books I only ended up with an attachment to Dane and Mother-One. Later in the future when a few more team members die I actually thought “good, not enough room in this book for them anyway!”

Back to the story. Craven is super pissed that not only did Team 7 survive and that Mr. Waering double crossed him, but that those awesome super powered suits got away! Also, after everything went down Lynch warned Craven that Dane will be gunning for him now. Craven means to have his revenge and gets presidential approval to reinstate one of his best operatives to hunt down the former Team 7. This man’s name is Raymond LeGauche and he’s a right bastard. Even the other members of the National Security Council think it’s a bad idea, but when the Commander-in-Chief says it’s cool, you let that maniac out of prison to do the dirty work! Also in the “we didn’t really think this out” department, a television reporter and camera man find out that vampires can’t be caught on tape, ruining what they assume will be their big break. Even few secret agent types still confiscate the video in question from them, which is basically just a video of a concert hall ceiling. The very next page has the Blood Queen spying via video camera on the vampire faction that means to dethrone her. So we’ve learned that vampires won’t show up on video playback, but can be clearly seen on live video. That reporter and camera man should’ve gone live with their story!

We end this entry with what was a four page preview of “WetWorks” from the back of an early issue of “WildC.A.T.s.” It takes place as the team is starting to work together and understand their suits, so I’d put it just after these first three issues of volume one. Its main focus is on Dane being the leader as the team takes on a small enclave of vampires. For what it is, it’s a nice little story, the main thing is how much better the coloring team got at WildStorm. Seriously, in the series proper they really look like they’ve been coated in gold, where in this story they look more like they’ve been coated in urine.

Where to find this story:

• the “Wetworks : Rebirth” trade paperback contains all 3 issue, and the short from “WildC.A.T.s” volume one issue 2
• Comixology: “Wetworks” vol. 1 issue 1

Next : “Union” Vol. 1 issues 0 – 4 by Mike Heisler and Mark Texeira (with Ryan Benjamin)