“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

“The Lone One: A Tale Every Vampire Knows”

This entry covers the “Lone One” series of back-up stories from “Wetworks” volume one issues 7, 9, 10 and 11 by Tom Harrington, Jeff Rebner, Mark Pennington and John Lowe.

To be honest you can pretty much read these back-up stories as they happen. I just wanted to single the stories out just a bit to talk about them without interrupting the narrative of “Wetworks.” Mainly because there was a lot going on in the last several issues of “Wetworks” and also because “the Lone One” is pretty unrelated to what is going on in the rest of the book.

The story starts off with a bunch of vampires messing with a very hurt werewolf in the Alps. They’re just screwing with it a bit before they kill it, you know, being dicks, mostly. One of them fires off some crazy powerful weapon into the ground at the werewolf which opens up a crack in the ice and unearths the Lone One. Yes, the Lone One is the WildStorm Universe’s answer to Frankenstein’s Monster. He then proceeds to get angry at the vampires and starts kicking their asses. Here’s the point where the vampires are poo-ing themselves as they’ve all heard of the Lone One, he’s bad news. The Lone One mentions being so alone in this world, and one vampire says “Well, why don’t you reproduce? You can do that you know. You just need to find your mate.” At this the Lone One finishes the job on the vampires and sallies forth towards Castle Frankenstein to have words with his creator.

The Lone One is in for a bit of a shock when he arrives at the castle. You see, the Lone One has been frozen in that ice for some time, and the world has moved on. Castle Frankenstein is now a tourist attraction! A peeved Lone One eventually finds the last living Frankenstein in the area, Justine, and elects her to create his female counterpart. He takes her through a secret entrance to Victor’s old lab and they find the body of the Lone One’s would-be mate. The Lone One tells Justine to get to work, but she doesn’t know any of this stuff. She’s just a normal modern every-person, how the hell is she supposed to know what to do? As luck would have it, help is soon to arrive, but it may not be what she wants at all.

The Lone One leaves the lab to let Justine work in peace, then, out of the shadows appears a squat gray skinned man named Conrad. Conrad reveals two things. First, he was there the whole time, hiding from the Lone One, second, that it was actually he that created the Lone One’s body as a new housing for his soul, but his assistant, Victor Frankenstein finished up the Lone One’s body and put a different soul in it, leaving Conrad pretty miffed. While Conrad is telling Justine all this information, the Lone One is being attacked by werewolves. The Lone One and the werewolves end up back inside the lab where eventually the wolves go after Conrad as the greater evil.

Suddenly an explosion happens. The Lone One is knocked clean out of the castle. He later awakens and walks along the Rhine river. He finds the hand of his would-be mate. Thinking aloud, he comments that he found that hand too far away from Castle Frankenstein for the blast to have thrown the hand, and surmises that someone must’ve been hastily carrying her away. He is sure she is still out there and with either Justine, Conrad or some werewolves. It gives him hope. And with that, we never see him or any of these characters ever again.

Continuity Corner:

• Conrad is said to have worked for the Blood Queen by the werewolves. He’s described as a sort of evil mad scientist.
• The werewolves mention that they don’t need a third Night Tribe in relation to the Lone One, them and vampires. Are they forgetting about the dwarves and the little hippo dudes?
• We’ll see Castle Frankenstein again when Elijah Snow visits it in 1919 during “Planetary” issue 13. I figure that the reason the monsters that Elisha encounters are so unlike the Lone One is because, as we see in this story, the Lone One was mostly created by Conrad and Victor just finished it and added a soul to that body. The monsters that Elisha finds are probably Victor trying to duplicate the Lone One without the help of Conrad.

NEXT: “Gen13” volume 2 issues 3 – 5 by J. Scott Campbell, Brandon Choi, Jim Lee, Alex Garner and Scott Williams.