“Backlash” issues 21 – 23

This entry covers “Backlash” issues 21 through 23 by Sean Ruffner, Brett Booth, JJ Kirby, John Tighe, Saleem Crawford, Mark Irwin, Martin Jimenez, Tad Ehrlich,  and George Davis.

We open with Marc reflecting on his recent past, having just recently found out he has not just a daughter, but a son, and also the death of his pal CyberJack. It’s a heavy load to carry, and it does result in him being a bit snippy at Amanda when she tries to talk to him. He eventually sees what a skell he is being and gives her a smooch and tells her that he’s cool, just a bit of a prick sometimes… you know, when things get heavy and you find you’re suddenly dad. Speaking of being a dad, his daughter Jodi is not only painting and singing Brandy songs, but also spying on her old man kissing his new lady. Jodi’s support of the relationship borders on  hilariously creepy, but more than her pops getting some, Jodi is more interested in the pizza she just ordered, and hot damn the door bell just rang!

Unfortunately for Jodi’s hunger, there is no pizza guy. Instead at the door is Brawl and Homicide of the Chasers, with Gaze and Recoil near by. Brawl seems pretty laid back about it all, but Homicide is ready to go nuts… I mean, what’s in a name right? So of course a fight breaks out with Marc, Amanda, and Jodi defending their house from Homicide, Gaze, and Recoil, while Brawl is rolling his eyes waiting for everyone to just calm the damn down. Why? Because there’s nothing to fight over! Brawl and the Chasers team were sent by the government to offer Amanda her official pardon! It’s a get out of jail free card and the six of them almost brought the house down.

Meanwhile that crazy Egyptian alien lady Lilitu is sending a new group of supercreeps to hunt down Amanda and kill her, after she got a tip off of Amanda heading to DC for her pardon. Also in Dayton, Ohio, a young man named Quinten has just arrived home late, getting in trouble with his mother, and then disappearing in a flash of light… ominous!

But let’s get to Amanda’s pardon! Giovanni sends a helicopter to pick up Marc, Amanda, and Jodi and bring them to the PSI building. What’s PSI? Why it’s the Paranormal Search and Investigation arm of the US government. Their purpose, as driven by Giovanni, is to monitor and find any paranormal activity, or superpowered being, and get them aligned with helping the US public’s well being, or eliminate them. Ultimately this also extends to Marc, Amanda, and Jodi with Giovanni letting them know that the only way he could get Amanda pardoned and Marc out of hot water with the US government for springing Amanda from Purgatory Max in the first place, is to be supervised by him, and come work at PSI. While a bit upset about this at first, Marc comes around, ready to train the new recruits, just like in his old StormWatch days.

Oh, you want to hear about the actual pardon, not just the events leading up to it, and around it? Well, no big shakes. A bunch of government higher-ups start to question Amanda on what she knows about the Cabal as she clears her, and Marc’s, good names. This doesn’t last too long, because those creeps that Lilitu hired break in and start killing people. Eventually Marc breaks in and he helps Amanda save the day. So you know she’s extra pardoned now or whatever.

Now it’s time for a break! Marc, Amanda, and Jodi are headed to Death Valley in Nevada to meet up with some of the workers cleaning up the debris left by the crashed SkyWatch station. He’s on a mission from Giovanni to meet, get some particle accelerator blueprints, grab some stuff from CyberJack’s place and then go back to DC. Well, there’s a couple of hiccups in that plan. The first being a trucker named Brink Gilman hitting on Amanda, the other being Talos. Yeah, THAT Talos!

So while stopping at a truckstop diner to get some gas, food, and coffee, Amanda befriends a stuntman turned trucker named Brink. He’s hitting on Amanda pretty hard, but Jodi is turning it down as quickly as it crops up. See what I said about her being creepily into Marc and Amanda’s relationship? Meanwhile Talos has come to the diner and is attacking the staff! After a punch and a whipping from Marc, a kick from Amanda, and being set on fire by Jodi, Talos is finally taken down by Brink smashing into Talos with his truck. Giovanni suddenly shows up to take everyone home, gets and earful of anger from Marc before telling him that he doesn’t ever “know what a “Talos” is.” which is hilarious. Giovanni is one cold and hilarious guy!

Continuity Corner:

• Marc is mostly reflecting on the events of “Fire from Heaven” at the start of issue 21, while it’s pretty recent, it doesn’t seem like it’s immediately recent, so I gave it a little breathing room between the event and these issues.
• Not sure why Jodi was de-aged so suddenly. She goes from being around 16ish to a solid 12 years old. It was pretty jarring when I was kid reading these for the first time, as I’d just seen her flirt w/ Bobby during “Fire from Heaven” and thinking “awww,”  to now seeing her so much younger and wondering if Bobby should be on a list.
• Giovani drops the name of “The Puritans” as a crazy secret government group for the first time in WildStorm comics! It’ll be a bit of time before we see them in the pages of “WildC.A.T.s” but this was a neat set up!
• We’ll catch back up with Quentin from Dayton, OH in “Backlash” issue 24 as the subject of Marc’s first assignment from PSI.
• At the end of issue 23 we see Brink spying Talos’s helmet thinking that the night was wild, but that he enjoyed it. Also with out a truck he thinks “Hmm.. maybe…” but nothing ever comes of it. Where’s my book w/ Brink running around trying to right wrongs wearing that Talos helmet and using his stuntman training? I’d check that out!
• According to the book it’s only been 3 months since SkyWatch crashed into the desert… uh… that was in issue #25 of volume on of “StormWatch”… even accounting for the time travel that still works out to be more right? “StormWatch” volume one was on issue 39 by now! I know in comics time it’s still compressed from real time, but for it to only have been 3 months? Yeah, I don’t think so. One part of me would have wanted to push this issue out a bit, but the 3 months since SkyWatch crashed thing makes it seem like it’s not soon enough!
• Also, with Jodi being placed in boarding school by issue 23’s end, and the cast being fully relocated to Washington DC, we have set up the new status quo for this book going forward, might as well keep this “re-tooling” arc together.

NEXT: “Grifter” volume two issues 5 – 7 by Steven Grant, Mel Rubi, Michael Ryan, Matt Broome, Richard Friend, Jason Gorder, Sal Regla, Randy Elliot, Norm Rapmund, Peter Guzman, Troy Hubbs, Michael Rockwitz, and Wendy Fouts

Where to Find These Stories

• Comixology: “Backlash” issues 21, 22, 23

“Backlash” issues 12 – 14

This entry covers “Backlash” issues 12 – 14 by Sean Ruffner, Brett Booth, Chuck Gibson, Al Vey and Mark Pennington.

Get this everybody, Amanda Reed is pissed off! Say what? Is she acting sassy, too? See, she is on the hunt for Gilbert Branum. Gilbert is the guy that can set her clear her name so she can officially be a free woman again. Of course, Slayton is going to show up and help her, it’s what friends do. Especially friends who are newly single and happened to have hooked up with other said friend in the past.

Slayton already has the inside scoop on Branum’s whereabouts, because Slayton called his old friend Giavonni at the government agency Paranormal Search & Investigations (P.S.I.) and got the skinny. After getting reacquainted, Reed and Slayton make a stop at CyberJack’s latest safehouse to get ready to capture Branum. Amanda also gets to meet Slayton’s daughter, Jodi, which was new to her (and still pretty new to us all.) The duo then jet off to the Florida Keys on their self-serving mission.

So, how can Branum help Slayton and Reed? Well, it turns out that he was a mole for the government in the Cabal. In fact, he helped stage the murder of Professor Hoagland, which Reed was wrongly accused of just so he could rise up the Cabal’s ranks and get further embedded for his spy work. He is the only guy that can say on the record that Reed is innocent, not only that but if Reed is innocent then Slayton breaking her out of Purgatory Max can’t be illegal because she was never supposed to be imprisoned in the first place. Getting close to Branum is the hard part, this is due to the government getting him round the clock protection, you know, due to him being a spy while being in the Cabal. Sure, the Cabal really isn’t a thing anymore (I mean the WildStorm Universe seems to still think it is, but it doesn’t really write to it being truly active anymore) but there’s Pike and the Cabal’s pet Coda still running around, so an order of protection is sensical. Heck, those two fantastical futuristic mercenaries Serge and Mahkinot are helping protect Barnam.

You know what happens. Reed and Slayton come up against Serge and Mahkinot and they all start to fight. It takes some crazy event for them to all see that they are on the same side. In this case, it is space monsters. Specifically a space vampire and a space mummy. I kind of wish this was a joke because of how silly it sounds, but with the drawing talents of Brett Booth, it works. In an instant Mahkinot takes Barnum away to safety, Reed and Serge get stunned by the space vampire Lilitu and Slayton… well… he dead.

The action relocates to Arizona where Lilitu has a pyramid built. Slayton’s “dead” body is be monitored by Lilitu’s people, Serge is in her thrall and Reed is some sort of transfixed. This is all due to Reed’s body armor. There was some deal between Lilitu’s space vampire big daddy Calobis and Helspont. Helspont was supposed to cure the space vampires of their space vampirism. Helspont failed, but they apparently built Reed’s suit with DNA that the Cabal had taken from Calobis. Complicated, sure, but this is comics, and this is why we LOVE comics. Well, at least it is why I love comics. Oh, ready to get more complicated? Turns out Calobis is still kinda sorta alive in this suit, but he’s too bonded with Amanda for anyone to remove it and not kill him. Turns out there’s another suit like this out there, and if Lilitu can find it, she can smoosh them together and Calobis will be free of Reed. Neat.

Through Calobis puppeting Reed, a small beat down is happening against Lilitu and her space mummy sidekick. Even Serge is coming in and out of his thrall to through a few punches in the correct direction. CyberJack and Jodi are on their way to save Marc and Amanda when they encounter Mahkinot and decide to team up. Meanwhile, newly re-alive Slayton is playing out an old memory of him being in ancient Japan. It works wonders and he ends up where all the action is going down until he snaps back into the real world. Before he can do anything heroic to save the day, Mahkinot Kool-Aide Man’s it and bursts through the wall. This throws sunlight everywhere and even though she’s a space vampire, Lilitu can’t be in sunlight. Thusly, our heroes manage an escape on Mahkinot’s jet.

Arriving back at CyberJack’s safehouse Jodi notes that a proximity alarm has been tripped. Slayton commands everyone to stay back as he goes to investigate. Who’s waiting for him? Turns out it’s his old pal Cray, fixing himself a bowl full of Cheerios. Hell of a time for a drop in Cray.

Continuity Corner:

• The end of this story picks right up in “Deathblow” volume one issue 23. We’re presented with only Cray in the kitchen in “Backlash” 14, but both he and Dane will be present in the “Deathblow” issue. It doesn’t seem like more than a few seconds have even passed, that’s why I’m not a fan of the reading order in the back of an issue of “Deathblow” that has Dane return to Wetworks to do a training exercise between the two issues. It just doesn’t work as well as my somewhat wonky way to read issues 14 and 15 of “Wetworks” volume one.
• Next time we’ll meet Lilitu is in “WildCore” issues 5 and 6, so keep her in the back of your mind.
• While it is never specified in the comic which government agency Branum was working for, he eventually goes on to work for P.S.I. as does the entire cast of “Backlash” after “Fire from Heaven.”
• We’re getting our first vision of Slayton’s long life with his memories of old Japan. It is 1642 and he’s in the Edo area of Japan as a ninja, fighting other ninja and samurai because he was betrayed by the current warlord in charge, Lord Tokugawa. Edo is now known as Tokyo, and the year lines up with when Japanese society was under the rule of the Tokugawa shogunate. Score one for historical accuracy (for once).
• Serge and Mahkinot have that cool jet, I figure that’s how they got from one paying job in LA in “Grifter” volume one issues 7 through 10, to the Florida Keys in “Backlash” issue 12 so quickly.
• Something’s been bugging me… how did Serge & Mahkinot get to the mid ’90s? I’ll admit, I may’ve missed it, but they’re from Mars and from the year 2017, right? So how did they get to Earth and in their past? Is it ever explained?

NEXT: “Deathblow” volume one issue 23 by Brandon Choi, Tom Joyner, Jeff Johnson, Scott Kolins and Trevor Scott