Sunday, May 02, 2021

Sunday Splash Page #164

 
"Bullets and Bike Shorts" in Domino (vol. 1) #2, by Ben Raab (writer), David Perrin (penciler), Harry Candelario (inker), Joe Rosas and Heroic Age (colorists), Richard Starkings and Comicraft (letterers)

Welcome to Mercenary May! I couldn't come up with an appropriate alliterative title using "Domino", and the last Sunday on the month will be a different character anyway.

As far as options for this three-issue mini-series went, it was really either this, or the splash page from issue #1 of Domino in a bikini at Carnival. Where the captions describe her as 'having the time of her life', while the art makes her look bored. Or like her mind has left her body.

I don't know what prompted this mini-series to exist, other than it was Marvel in the late '90s (this came out in 1997), and so anything X-adjacent was worth a shot on a floundering ship. I guess not much had been done with Domino's backstory, so they figured it's free real estate. Raab goes the "never before mentioned spouse" approach, as we learn Domino fell for a guy with predictive abilities she was assigned to guard when she worked for, I'm not sure, Department H or SHIELD, or something. A group that has access to Mandroid armors, and least Henry Peter Gyrich in the door.

Domino thought the guy got killed by AIM years ago, but finds out from Puck (who doesn't love Puck?) that isn't the case. Donald Pierce, Lady Deathstrike, and the Reavers play the antagonists, as Pierce wants to put Milo's mind into electronic form so he can use it to dominate world markets or something. I dunno, like Domino, I tuned out when Pierce started monologuing about how Fitzroy's weird Sentinels didn't kill him in that issue of Uncanny X-Men (which is almost certainly more notable for appearing to have been Emma Frost's death).

Raab writes Domino as the sort who likes to banter and throw juvenile insults. She's impulsive and quick to act, which is a little strange, since I remember her playing more of a moderating presence in X-Force. I guess when she doesn't have to keep a bunch of teenagers (and Cable) under control, she lets loose.

At times, she's written as really relying on her luck power to help her somehow, but other times it just seems to save the day when she's not expecting it. Which is good, because she spends most of this story seeming completely outclassed. Her fight against Lady Deathstrike presents Deathstrike as almost like a Terminator, the flesh parts being steadily burned or shot away, increasingly revealing the metal underneath. Domino's barely staying alive, closer to Sarah Conner in the first Terminator than T2.

Perrin gives her the bike shorts and exposed midriff sports bra look above, which, maybe that was her usual look back in the '90s, I don't know. At one point she's wearing a skullcap to keep her hair under control while she infiltrates the base, but it's not like all her chalk-white exposed skin isn't going to stand out like a flare in a nighttime environment.

I own this because it was included in a collection of Domino stories Marvel released to coincide with Deadpool 2, along with next week's entry. From what I understand, it's the more highly-regarded Domino mini-series.

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