Random Back Issues #88 - Dynamo 5 #23

That's what you said when you wouldn't stop at McDonald's last week.

Last time we looked at an issue of Dynamo 5, most of the team had packed up and gone home, leaving a hodgepodge of Faeber's other characters to fill the gap. The whole team is back now, but things aren't going much better.

Maddie was investigating the disappearance of a friend's husband, only to find he and five other scientists put their brains on an android body and started calling themselves Brain Trust. The ensuing fight wasn't going well, so team shapeshifter Myriad injected himself with an extra dose of a drug he'd been taking to boost his speed, strength and reflexes. Unfortunately, this version of super-soldier serum turned him into a version of Whiptail, a Lizard-type foe the team fought before.

Even worse, people all over town who were using the drug are also turning into Whiptails. Lizard-man epidemic! Also, no help from the authorities. In fact, Maddie orders half the team, Visionary and Slingshot, to go help the authorities. 

While Scrap and Scatterbrain try to contain their teammate, Maddie makes a pitch to Brain Trust. They use their knowhow to devise an antidote and it'll help protect the loved ones some of them probably have in Tower City. Considering last issue's attempt to get these guys to surrender by threatening their original bodies didn't work, this seems like a faulty plan. So Maddie also agrees to let them just go, as long as they get out of Tower City. Scrap and Scatterbrain object, and Maddie does what she usually does when someone disagrees - tells them to shut up and does what she pleases. She's Asshole Batman, basically, if he was a middle-aged secret agent/reporter.

Fortunately, Brain Trust are not smart enough to recognize they could just leave now, and Maddie and the team are too occupied to stop them. Antidote created, antidote applied, everyone's back to normal. Brain Trust leaves, the husband Maddie was looking for asking her to tell his wife he loved her. Maddie tells him to just leave. Curious how she's going to explain all this to her friend. They try going up the ladder to the source of the drug, but he was working with the head of the covert agency Maddie used to work for, and got tipped off. Bad guys getting away all over the place.

Leaving time for an uncomfortable conversation between Myriad and the others about why he took the drugs. Basically, he felt he had the lame powers and needed a way to keep up. Slingshot points out the last time they found out Myriad was keeping a secret, he said it was because he wasn't used to having people to confide in. Well, yeah, that sort of ingrained behavior doesn't just vanish overnight. Especially since, as I recall, the team didn't take finding out Myriad's momma was also an alien all that well.

In "subplots which are about to become plot," Captain Dynamo's other daughter (via one of his arch-foes), Synergy, has brought a special gun she stole from that covert agency to a guy she's staying with. The guy turns out to be Maddie's estranged son.

Everyone in this comic is a lousy parent. It's like reading X-Men!

{4th longbox, 42nd comic. Dynamo 5 #23, by Jay Faerber (writer), Matteo Scalera and Mahmud A. Asrar (artists), Ron Riley (colorist), Charles Pritchett (letterer)}

Sunday Splash Page #174

 

"Lizard Men Improve Any Occasion," in Dynamo 5 #22, by Jay Faerber (writer), Mahmud Asrar and Yildiray Cinar (artists), Ron Riley (colorist), Charles Pritchett (letterer)

The conceit behind is Dynamo 5 was that the Superman of that world was kind of a horndog, and after his death, his widow (a top-notch reporter) tracks down his various illegitimate kids and forms them into a super-team. Each kid ends up with one of dead old dad's powersets - telepathy, flight, super-strength, shape-shifting, or vision powers - and away they go.

Each of them comes from a different situation, and they're spread out in age a bit. Gage and Hector are both still in high school, Livvie's attending Georgetown, Spencer's an adult living in a series of hotel rooms. Livvie's mother is deceased, but her father (the one who raised her) isn't. Gage's parents are together, but he's got two younger brothers. Bridget lives alone, but her parents seem to having periodic falling outs. Faerber has a couple of the parents find out in different ways, with different reactions. The teens have their own trouble adjusting, both to the truth about their father, to having siblings, and to having super-powers and the strain it puts on their everyday lives. Sometimes to the good, like Gage being determined to help Hector talk to girls. Sometimes bad, when the team learns the other side of Spencer's family tree is a lot different from theirs and reacts badly.

Asrar's the artist for almost the entire series, minus this and one other issue Cinar draws at least part of, and one drawn by Matteo Scalera. Since it's a team book, Asrar goes for the team uniform approach, which a little variation. Scatterbrain gets a hood, puts the emphasis on his mental powers. Visionary's got a helmet with a visor that amplifies his powers. Slingshot gets some of the old armpit wings for maneuvering, stuff like that. Keeps them from being too interchangeable. 

Most of the different hero costumes are pretty straightforward, but I think Asrar has a little more fun with some of the villains. Like Brainstorm, the guy in the background of the picture above, who is a big android body with the brains of five human scientists on it (that's what the yellow bubbles are. You'd think they'd hide their brains inside the body, but I guess it's more impressive-looking this way.)

Asrar doesn't do anything too flashy on page layouts most of the time, but each character has a distinct look in and out of costume, which helps them feel like individuals. The fight scenes are well-drawn, and even the characters who take a physical approach do it differently. Myriad is maybe the most acrobatic, using a lot of flips and jumps kicks, whereas Scrap tends to just charge in a throw haymakers. She's stronger and tougher, but she also doesn't have as much experience fighting. When Gage fights physically, he tends to do so like a football player. A lot of tackles and using his size, which is what would come naturally to him by now.

Faerber and Asrar plays with expectations a bit. Maggie, the widow, turns out to have actually been a secret agent who uses being a reporter as a cover, or maybe an additional way to get information. She ends up keeping secrets a lot, and has her own skeletons in the closet. Which is where Maggie's tendency to act like a Nick Fury/college football coach-style hardass backfires a few times. But the series touches on the fact it's not easy for her to work with the living embodiment of her husband's fidelity. Gage, the big jock linebacker ends up with the telepathy, which predictably frustrates him, while Bridget, the extremely pale (but hot) goth girl gets the super-strength.

Faerber shifts things up a lot with some surprises and twists. Takes Maggie out of commission for a few issues, forcing the team to work without her guidance. The surprise reveal of Spencer's mother that throws the team for another loop. The roster changes once, Maggie's past comes back to haunt the team. There were a few things I don't think ever actually came to fruition, like the reporter Bridget briefly starts dating, or her and Spencer being roomies. On the one hand, it keeps the book from getting stale, because things can change at any minute, but on the other hand, it feels like some things get tossed aside without ever exploring if they could be interesting. Maybe Faerber reconsidered after he started and that's why he moved on from those ideas.

Faerber had a few other superhero books he was writing at the same time - Noble Causes, Firebirds, maybe one other I can't think of - and he set all of them in the same universe. Which gives him the advantage of having other books to introduce characters and concepts in, which could then be sprinkled into this book whenever. Which is a nice way to make a book feel like it's part of a universe that's already been going for a while.

The series ran 25 issues from 2007-2009, plus an Annual and Holiday Special. There was another 5-issue mini-series a year or two later, but it was a big alien invasion thing that used not only a bunch of Faerber's other characters but also some other Image characters like Invincible, and I'm not really here for that.

Random Back Issues #53 - Dynamo 5 #16

You think that's bad, faceless cannon fodder, you should try the DC Universe. Four Green Lanterns, two Flashes, a fluctuating number of Robins and Batmen. . .

First time talking about this series that I grabbed in back issues back in 2015 or so. Quick synopsis is that the Superman-type of this universe died, but it turns out he was kind of horndog, so his Lois Lane (a secret agent named Maddie, who played reporter as a cover) tracks down 5 of his illegitimate kids, each with one of his powers, and turns them into a super-team to protect Tower City.

Except Maddie's in a coma, and four of the teens said enough. The remaining holdout, Scrap, has cobbled together a makeshift team from a few other heroes she or the team met along the way to try and hold the line. Which includes the two Firebirds up there, a guy named Quake who's a fine hero (as long as he stays on his meds), and Vigil, who's your mysterious terror that flaps in the night type (but is actually a character a reader of the series would already know).

As for this issue, there's not much to it, really. The new roster fights a bunch of guys calling themselves "the Veil" who were trying to rob a bank. It's just dudes in green jumpsuits with guns, so it goes pretty easy, but the previous team already trounced these guys and handed all their stuff over the a covert security agency, so where did this bunch come from?

 

After a little "enhanced interrogation" by Vigil, it turns out the bank robbers are actually a bunch of those covert security guys who decided there was enough chaos in the city they could make easy money using the bad guys' identities for themselves. Jeez, just take payoffs like regular bent cops.

The issue ends with news Maddie's condition is getting worse, and the only one who might be able to pull her out of it is Gage, the high school football star who got pop's telepathy (which at the moment, he's mostly using to know what play the other team is about to run.)

[4th longbox, 35th comic. Dynamo 5 #16, by Jay Faerber (writer), Mahmud Asrar (artist), Ron Riley (color artist), Charles Pritchett (letterer)]

Random Back Issues #45 - Nova #34

No, but I didn't take you for being rude, either, Karla.

Our first Random Back Issue was from Nova, and now we're back, with an issue from about 10 months later. By this point, we're out of War of Kings, and into Realm of Kings, which was basically just what Cosmic Marvel was like after War of Kings. Less an event than a vague tagline they could stamp on the top of the cover.

There's a giant tear in the fabric of the universe called the Fault as a result of the most recent Kree/Shi'ar war. Nova went in there after Darkhawk (accused of killing Empress Lilandra), and they got caught up in a war between two versions of The Sphinx, something possible because normal rules of reality don't apply in this place which isn't technically within reality. The old one is riddled with time cancer basically, from his fucking around with his own timeline, and is trying to convince his younger self not to make the same mistakes. That didn't work, so now they're fighting, using proxies.

Old Sphinx has Nova, Darkhawk, and versions of Black Bolt, Reed Richards, and Namorita from earlier time periods. Young Sphinx brings in a bunch of people whose powers are derived from mysterious gems, same as him. Moonstone, Basilisk, Man-Wolf, Ulysses Bloodstone, and Gyre, one of the Fraternity of Raptors Darkhawk's been struggling with. One-on-one combat, best-of-five.

Nova draws Moonstone, fighting in his old high school playground, and seems to be struggling despite the fact he fought her and three other Thunderbolts when he got back to Earth after Annihilation. But he's also trying to talk to her, as well. I assume because he thinks Young Sphinx is controlling his proxies via their power sources, but still. Boooooo! No talking! 

Namorita squares off in swordfight with Man-Wolf in 'the Floating Fortress of Arisen Tyrk', in the Other Realm. There's also undead soldiers there, so a mermaid princess and a wolfman are swordfighting while being attacked by zombies. Richards ends up against Bloodstone in Vanaheim. I forget which of the Nine Realms that is. Looks like Arizona with active volcanoes. Reed's playing to subdue, but Ulysses has time-delayed exploding shells and is out for the kill.

Black Bolt ends up against Basilisk in the ruins of Attilan. he finds his own grave marker, and basically stands there dumbfounded until he's turned to stone and shattered, giving Young Sphinx the first win.

The Inhumans, fucking useless as always. This is why nobody likes your people, Boltagon.

Darkhawk (who Old Sphinx somehow didn't even perceive) ends up fighting Gyre at the Fraternity Tree in Null Space, where all the crystals that house Darkhawk armors sit. Or something. Honestly, I lost track of all the retconning they did to Darkhawk long before Chris Sims and Chad Bowers did that shit about how the Darkhawks were meant to be an 'anti-Phoenix' or something. Fuck, that was stupid. Anyway, Chris has figured out how to force the A.I., or disembodied mind in the crystal out of the body it's using, and he does that to Gyre, netting Old Sphinx his first win.

Even so, Young Sphinx is feeling cocky. He says Nita's only seconds away from being beaten by Man-Wolf, and Bloodstone is about to slit Reed's throat. I call bullshit on an Atlantean losing to John Jameson dressed as a furry. Reed's able to fend him off, and mess with the fuses to the shells so they explode on Bloodstone's belt. I feel like Reed could have picked that up from Johnny and Ben's prank wars.

Meanwhile, Moonstone is going for the blunt force approach of crushing Nova under 150 times Earth's gravity and rising. Goku and Vegeta are not impressed. And neither is Rich, who ultimately pulls out the win by hitting her with a 'compressed grav pulse'. Pencil-thin bit of gravity energy, I guess. Precise application rather than broad-based.

So, it's a 3-1 win for Old Sphinx. No one is quite sure what that means, until Darkhawk marches up and rips the Ka Stone right of Young Sphinx' head. Well, OK then. Unfortunately, because Darkhawk's crystal is apparently also one of those old stone power sources, Old Sphinx can control him and gets two Ka Stones. Well, shit.

The book ends two issues from now as Thanos Imperative kicks off. So we aren't quite at the end of the Abnett/Lanning Cosmic Marvel, but it's close. Probably only a year or so from Bendis taking over Guardians of the Galaxy. Yeesh. Also included in this issue a preview of Jeph Loeb and Frank Cho's New Ultimates series, spinning out of the trash fire that was Ultimatum! 

Written by the same guy who is responsible for said trash fire! Plus with 9000% more butt shots in the art, courtesy of the guy who gave us Naked Lady Ultron!

It's a miracle any of us still read comics at all.

[8th long box, 38th comic. Nova (vol. 4) #34. Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning (writers), Mahmud A. Asrar (penciler), Scott Hanna (inker), Bruno Hang (colorist), Cory Petit (letterer)]