“Batman: Urban Legends” issues 1 – 5

Written by Matthew Rosenberg

Wildstorm concepts:  

Okay, so these issues set up a whole new reality for the Wildstorm characters in the DCU; a new past and new looks that don’t mesh at all with what came before, but maybe we can chalk it up to the universe reset that happened after the events of “Death Metal.”

In this new timeline, Cole Cash was in Team 6 instead of Team 7, or perhaps before that. Team 6 was comprised of Cole, going by Deadeye, his brother Max, going by Grifter, Deathblow, Lynch, and appearing for the first time ever, Holden Carver, Marc Slayton and Christie Blaze!

Years ago, Team 6 was ambushed by Mr. Freeze and the terrorist organization known as the Kobra cult in Midway City. It went badly and Cole and his brother were shot before the Superman and Wonder Woman appeared and saved the day. Around that time, Bruce Wayne partnered with the up-and-coming company Halo, who was doing groundbreaking work in the field of biotech. They saved Cole’s life, but the materials used in the procedure were still being developed and there wasn’t enough for both brothers. Cole was deemed the better candidate, so Max died. Afterwards, Cole inherited his Grifter mask and codename from him. While recovering, he met Lucius Fox, the man for whom he’d work in the future.

After that, Cole started working for Halo, led by Jacob Marlowe, and joined his WildC.A.Ts (!). Six months ago, Halo had set up Cole with a fake job as a thug who made sure lowlives paid their debts, and a fake identity by passing as his own brother, Max. This attracts the spy organization Leviathan, as Halo planned. Leviathan wants Cole to prove itself by killing Lucius Fox, but he turns things around by saving Lucius to score himself a job with him – a long con to get into Wayne Enterprises’ main computer and steal all their info on Batman. During this event, we briefly get a glimpse of someone who looks like Voodoo.

One evening, Cole, who dislikes being called Grifter now, asks The Penguin for help to meet Nora Fries, the supervillain wife of Mr. Freeze. During the gathering, Penguin asks why the name “Marlowe” keeps coming up around Cole, but he refuses to answer and things seem to turn violent. The details afterwards are sketchy, but Nora seems to have been drafted into the Wildcats, and the whole thing is made to look like Nora was killed by Zealot. After the meeting, Grifter is harrassed by Batman, but he refuses to tell him anything and hilariously kicks him in the nuts, to no result.

Later, Grifter saves Lucius from an assassination attempt from Leviathan. He gets wounded in the neck, but the wound closes quickly with what seems to be rapid healing. He meets Chance Adibi, global security head for Wayne Enterprises, and his boss. That night, Grifter gets caught in the middle of a skirmish between Red Hood, one of Batman’s groupies, and supervillain Toyman. This time Cole manages to knock out Red Hood and again he drafts the villain into his Wildcats, replacing Toyman with a fake corpse.

Cole’s main plan is still to access Wayne Enterprises’ main computer, and for that he steals a security card. However, that only allows him access to the computer room, not the network. For that, Cole sleeps with Chance. In the afterglow, she asks him why she can’t find anything about his past, and Cole amusingly answers it’s something “that’s a lifetime ago and a universe away from here.” After Chance leaves, Cole clones her computer’s hard drive with Ladytron’s help to be able to access the Wayne Enterprises network. This, of course, was bait laid out by Chance, who doesn’t trust Cole.

The next day, Grifter meets Bruce Wayne, who says John Lynch recommended Cole to him and wants Cole to work for him. However, Cole pretends he’s never heard that name. After that, Bruce changes to his Batman persona and helps Cole escape from an ambush from the Black Mask Gang, who are seeking payback because it looks like Grifter is killing Gotham criminals. When they’re done beating up the bad guys, Batman wants to interrogate Cole about the corpses, too, but Cole is teleported away by Void.

Later, Cole finally accesses the Wayne Enterprises network, but it turns out the Batman files are even above the head of security’s clearance. Cole will need to get into Lucius own computer; for that purpose, he hires contract killer Deathstroke to pretend to fight him. They make sure to attract as much attention as possible to set up a trap to catch Batman, but instead Superman arrives and botches the plan. At the same time, Leviathan assaults Wayne Enterprises. Cole escapes by teleport, but since he can’t save Lucius in time, he sends Zealot instead. This is the last straw for Lucius, who fires Cole.

Out of options to get into the Wayne Building, Cole crawls back to Leviathan and convinces them he was working to bring all the data to them. They agree to help him get into the building, but instead of being a small-scale operation like Cole planned, they bring in an army and Cole needs to fight back. He gets help from Batman and his sidekick Nightwing, with whom Cole exchanges some witty dialogue. Ultimately, Cole manages to get Lucius into the main server room which hosts the Batman computer, the only computer in the world that has access to all of Batman’s files. He steals all the data, and teleports in his WildC.A.Ts team: Zealot, Deathblow, Caitlin Fairchild, Void, some kind of android built by Toyman who might be Spartan, and Nora Fries. This Caitlin seems to have the ability to increase her mass and go from looking like a little girl to a hulking giant, kind of like Maul. After defeating the bad guys, the Wildcats leave, promising this will all make sense later.

Continity Corner:

• Max Cash is dead?! But he appeared in the pages of “Grifter” back in 2011!
• In the pages of “Team 7”, Cole gave a different reason for wearing his mask, but in this comic/universe reshuffle, it’s passed down from his brother.
• In this comic onwards, Zannah hates being called Zealot. However, that wasn’t the case according to her appearances in “Deathstroke” and “Stormwatch.”
• Deathblow is black in this appearance, but he was white in his appearances in “Superman“, “Grifter” and “Teen Titans“.
• Why does Caitlin look so much different and younger than her appearances in “Team 7”, “Ravagers“, “Supergirl” “Batgirl“, “Legion Lost“, “Superboy” and “Teen Titans“?
• Which of the tree Ladytrons shown in DC is the Wildcats member? The one from “Grayson“, the one from “Teen Titans” or the one from “Team 7“?
• And finally, why doesn’t Nightwing remember Grifter from the time they tangled during his days as Agent 37 in “Grayson“?
  Next: “Batman: Urban Legends” issue 6, written by Matthew Rosenberg
  
  Wildstorm appearances in the DC Universe: #384

“Future’s End” issues 31 – 48

Written by Brian Azzarello, Jeff Lemire, Dan Jurgens and Keith Giffen.

Wildstorm Concepts:

After the Cadmus island crisis is over, Cole needs to readjust to society. He’s a wanted man, so his new friend Lana Lang offers him to make him a new identity as “Mr. Lang” He is now married! Cole contacts his IT guy, Justin, but just as soon Fifty Sue finds him.

Meanwhile, Voodoo’s team of baddass chicks has gone from “kill Fifty Sue” to “work with Fifty Sue” to “reclaim the DNA vault that sank in the ocean.” As it turns out, when Cadmus Island blew up its DNA bank sank, and all of Cadmus’ men perished with Brother Eye. That means it’s up to Voodoo’s team, along with Cole and Fifty Sue, who know calls herself Sequel in honour of Deathstroke. Cole, Justin and Voodoo reunite after long weeks, and Voodoo is stoked to see Cole alive, what with being his on and off lover and all.

Unexpectedly, Lana lives up to being Fifty Sue’s mother figure and convinces her to stop misusing her powers and calling herself Sequel. Sue agrees to help the mission and simply teleports the vault into the building. Thinking she’s too dangerous, one of Voodoo’s girls, Mercy, goes ahead and kills Sue; Mercy’s touch is mortal. Cole can’t believe Voodoo would accept a hit on a girl just for money, and things get cold between them. However, Sue was simply pretending. She was alive, and teleports Lana, Cole and the vault to the Sahara desert. Cole realizes if Lana’s Sue’s mum, he’s expected to be the dad. He’s not happy about this. While she’s at it, Sue also collects Justin, to act as he loving “older brother”. A happy ending.

As for Voodoo, she gets to live on the countryside acting as Faraday’s bodyguard. He’s scared Brother Eye will take over everything, so he hides in a bunker underground. Voodoo gets to have the house on the surface.

Meanwhile, StormWatch’s leap of faith pays off as they arrive on Earth. Engineer is so happy to see her teammate Hawkman alive that she can’t stop making out with him. Suddenly, the rests of the Carrier are latched on by a tractor beam from the Ant Farm, S.H.A.D.E.’s headquarters. Father Time, S.H.A.D.E.’s leader, says Brainiac is coming, and he’s the worst threat either organization has faced. So they need to borrow Engineer – whether she wants it or not. The two groups begin fighting, but Atom shrinks inside Father Time’s body, and starts fighting with his brain. Father Time reveals he only wants to murder Engineer – Brainiac took his entire race, and he’ll do anything to stop him from doing the same to the human race. He believes Engineer is compromised, that she’s his agent now. Ultimately, Atom stops Father Time and takes control of S.H.A.D.E. Frankenstein says whatever’s coming will be stopped by him and his new teammates – as the new StormWatch.

Soon after, Brainiac arrives on Earth’s proximity. StormWatch warns the Justice League, but right at the same Engineer is taken over by Brainiac again – as Father Time had feared. She takes down her teammates, breaks the Carrier’s hull and heads towards her master. She starts building a giant Brainiac head, while Brainiac heads to Earth and begins trapping New York City in a giant dome. StormWatch and some Justice League members approach the giant head, but when Hawkman touches it he disappears in a flash. Turns out this Brainiac is a god who lives outside of time and space, and all the different versions of Brainiac we have seen through the decades were mere avatars of this big one. He’s been trapping cities from all over the multiverse and storing them in his Blood Moon, including the original Wildstorm reality. And now he wants to do the same to New York.

Atom shrinks down to get inside the machine, where she finds Engineer in the center of all the different realities stored in there. She was the nexus, so Atom cuts down the cables around her and shuts down the machine. No longer able to send a signal to his Moon, Brainiac switches to manual mode, and starts elevating the city towards space. Right at the same time, Brother Eye spreads through the city, promising to protect it. Earth’s heroes make use of this, using Brother Eye’s technology along with The Atom’s powers to shrink down Brainiac until he’s no longer a threat. Afterwards, Superman uses all his strength to catch the falling city.

Once the Brainiac crisis is over, Eye reveals his hand, reveling itself against the heroes and killing Batman Beyond. The rest of the heroes prepare a desperate plan: Tim Drake puts on the Batman Beyond cowl and travels to the past once more. There, he stops Brother Eye from letting passage to the Earth-2 citizens, thereby stopping the Earth-2 War. When he goes back to the future, however, the doomed reality still exists. He failed. Brother Eye still has the control. It’s a very disappointing ending to all these chapters, but I guess they wanted to keep selling Batman Beyond’s adventures. The story will go on in the pages of “Batman Beyond” but it won’t have anything to do with Wildstorm.

Next: “Convergence” issues 1 – 2, written by Jeff King & Scott Lobdell.

 

“Future’s End” issues 0 – 30

Written by Brian Azzarello, Jeff Lemire, Dan Jurgens and Keith Giffen.

Wildstorm Concepts:

This is a long, complex story, so I’ll focus on the Wildstorm segments exclusively.

Thirty five years from the present, the artificial intelligence Brother Eye took over the world and assimilated nearly all human life, turning people into mindless killer androids. The remaining superheroes have a desperate plan – to turn off something called the Firestorm Battery, so that Brother Eye won’t be able to continue powering his satellite and controlling Earth’s heroes. Grifter and Amethyst are tasked with it, but their planned distraction goes awry and they’re found. Soon after, an assimilated Green Lantern vaporizes the two of them. With no other options, Batman Beyond (Terry McGinnis) travels to the past to stop that reality from taking place, to murder the man responsible. However, he and his helper A.I. A.L.F.R.E.D. miss the target date and instead of arriving in the present they arrive five years from now, where Brother Eye’s plans are already in play. That’s the premise of the story. Every issue takes place in an alternate timeline, five years in the future and disconnected from the other DC Comics.

Brother Eye is an artificial intelligence built by heroes Batman and Mr. Terrific in 2011. It was first created within the satellite known as Brother I, using Mother Box technology from the alien world of Apokolips. It was originally created to monitor the activities of Metahumans, vigilantes and other superpowered individuals to protect humanity. However, Brother Eye quickly gained sentience and went rogue, prompting the Justice League to shut it down. However, it managed to rise again, only to be shut down, several other times. It was defeated by the organization Checkmate and the Justice League International before jumping to a new satellite. By this point, its Apokoliptan origins drove Eye mad. Its quest to stop humanity’s differences compelled it to attempt to impose a complete, draconian order and uniformity to all humans, an action which led it to believe itself to be a God as well as the Anti-Life Equation.

In this bigger body he learned about alternate Earths, especifically Earth-2, which he kept a lookout for. He witnessed its population losing a war against Apokolips, so he sent a beacon to try and rescue the survivors. The peple from Earth-2 were able to follow the signal and jump to Earth-0, but they were followed by Apokolips’ forces. Some heroes from Earth-2 attempted to self-destruct their ships to let the others escape, so Eye teleported them inside its satellite. Soon after he was boarded by agents of Project Cadmus, led by Slade Wilson. They kidnapped the heroes from Earth-2 and tried to shut down Brother Eye, who transferred its intelligence to the Cadmus shuttle. Going back to Earth with them, Eye landed on Cadmus Island, where Cadmus hid all of the Earth-2 superheroes to experiment on them. Brother Eye hid on the island’s systems, awaiting to act while playing along as Mister Terrific’s AI. Ironically, Batman Beyond is followed when he travels through time by a killer android, and Terrific stumbles upon this robotic corpse, giving him the means to develop the technology which will create the doomed future.

Meanwhile, all the other Earth-2 survivors landed in Earth, followed by the endless Apokolips troops. As Earth started defending itself, what followed was called the Earth-2 war. After the war, the governments of the world responded with hostility to the new interdimensional refugees, and scientists such as Mister Terrific developed new ways to detect who is from Earth or who is, in fact, an Earth 2 alien.

StormWatch in this timeline has a different lineup; they have lost Jenny and the Projectionist and gained Hawkman (Katar Hol) and Mermaid (Nina Mazursky). They were travelling the Bleed in the Carrier when an unknown force pulls them out into the Huron System, in the farthest reaches of known space. They lose control of the Carrier, which starts attacking them, and Engineer is taken over by Brainiac, who speaks through her and says everything StormWatch has done was in preparation for the ultimate threat; he is the storm they were created for. Apollo flies outside to try to find what’s causing all this, but he’s immediately vaporized! The mysterious enemy infiltrates the Carrier and causes it to self-destruct.

Back on Earth, paranormal organization S.H.A.D.E. sends agent Frankenstein, the Atom and Amethyst into the rests of the Carrier to seek out survivors. They find the corpses of everybody but Engineer and Apollo, and it turns out Hawkman isn’t really dead – the Nth metal in his body always brings him back. Suddenly, his StormWatch emergency communicator starts going off – Engineer is alive, and calling for help. All the heroes but Atom track the signal to a nearby planet, but the ship shuts down as they hit the atmosphere. They crash into a technological world and are swarmed by Brainiac’s robots – among them, an assimilated Engineer. She takes the heroes out, and they spend the next few weeks locked in a prison. They are visited by the controlled Engineer, who wishes to take them to her master. She reveals they aren’t in a planet, but rather in Brainiac’s spaceship, the size of a planet: The Blood Moon. Back on the rests of the Carrier, Atom is visited by the Shadow Lords, who name him the new leader of StormWatch; of a new team for a new era.

Back in the Blood Moon, StormWatch is taken in front of Brainiac, who is a giant now, but suddenly Atom shows up, and he brings Black Adam with him. The heroes start fighting Brainiac and his minions. They know they can’t win, so they take Angie by force and escape in the Atom’s ship. They’re chased by many robots, but once they’re far away from the Blood Moon Angie returns to normal. They arrive on the rests of the Carrier with the evil robots behind them. Atom begins giving out orders like a good leader, telling Engineer to reboot what’s left of the Carrier. However, they lost their navigation system, so they can make a jump, but they could end up anywhere. Needing to get rid of all those robots, they make a jump for it…

Meanwhile, Grifter is back in the game of seeking out daemonites and slaughtering them. What’s more, his powers have been developing so now he can spot not only daemonites, but also Martians, Earth-2 doppelgangers, all kinds of undercover life forms. He now works with a guy named Justin; he’s Cole’s tech guy, cataloguing alien types, adapting their technology so that he can use it against them, keeping tabs on those they know about. Cole found him after he was tracking daemonites to Justin’s home; his parents had given up their bodies to daemonites and they were about to do the same thing to Justin. After Cole saved him, they started working together. Presently, Cole brought a living daemonite to Justin, who is experimenting with it and trying to create a dispersible agent to kill them in clusters.

Justin informs Cole he’s being tracked; an agent called King Faraday disguised himself as an FBI Agent and is hoping Grifter gets one tiny scratch in one of his missions so that he can be identified on one of his crime scenes. Unable to get to him through conventional means, King teleports right next to Cole and shoots him in the back. If he wants to heal his spine, he’ll have to agree to King’s request to go work for him. He takes Cole to Cadmus Island, where he’s healed through their superior technology and forced to work alongside Slade Wilson, Deathstroke. They are followed around by Fifty Sue – a nearly omnipotent girl who gets pissed off easily, Cadmus’ first attempt at creating a superhuman. Cole’s job is to use his detecting powers to seek out any hidden superhumans – Cadmus wants to collect them and experiment on them.

After Cole has been gone for a few weeks, Justin does what they had previously agreed in case anything happened to Grifter – to go with Voodoo. She agrees to take him in. In this timeline, Voodoo works for black ops – she did dirty missions for the government that were needed during the Earth 2 war. But now they are sending goons against her, trying to take her out. Voodoo and her girls decide to go straight to the source and confront their old boss: Sargent Rock. He explains he only ever sent “loose end operatives” against them – people he needed to get rid of. He knew the girls were never in any real danger. In fact, he wanted to attract their attention. He reveals he worked for Cadmus all along, and now he needs the girls’ help: He wants to take out Fifty Sue, who is too powerful to be controlled.

Back in the island, Cole is attacked by a mysterious invisible robot – an OMAC, as they call the guards in the island. Investigating, they come across a researcher from Earth 2, Lana Lang, who joins Fifty Sue’s happy family. It seems the island has been experiencing several glitches, like the stealth OMACs or the fact that the chips installed in the Earth-2 captives have been growing in size somehow. Suddenly, all of the captives start being controlled through their chips, and they escape from their cells and take over the island. Having been chipped, Cole is controlled too. Brother Eye has made his move; it knows a group of superheroes are coming to rescue the trapped Earth-2 heroes. Cole is put to sleep and along with Fifty Sue, Lana and Deathstroke they manage to escape. Sue teleports and faces Brother Eye, where they strike a mysterious deal. Stripping Cole from his chip, the team regroups with Faraday and they head to a bunker.

Grifter reveal his power has evolved to the point he can spot superhumans from normal people, and Faraday is one of them. Deathstroke is mad that Cole didn’t tell them, but Cole never agreed to go to the island to start with. Tired of all the danger, Faraday simply uses his powers and teleports away. Fifty Sue doesn’t care – she has an evil computer overlord to beat. However, Brother Eye plays mind games when it shows Sue a recording of Deathstroke agreeing to protect Eye until it can be plugged outside the island, onto the world’s systems. Grifter doesn’t know about this, though. He wants to get out of the island, but all of the boats are fitted with retinal scan security, and Deathstroke’s the only one with access. And he says they’ve stil gotten work to do: the island has a vault filled with DNA samples, and he wants to secure it.

Faraday teleports to Las Vegas, to Sargeant Rock, and Fifty Sue goes after him with a mere thought. She throws him a tantrum because of being betrayed by Deathstroke, saying she wants a new team to take him down. Right at that moment, Voodoo walks in, having the ideal team with her. At the same time, a group of heroes lead by Green Arrow storms the island, and begins battling Brother Eye’s OMACs. Seeing them, Deathstroke shows his true allegiance and attempts to shoot Cole, but he’s killed by Fury, a heroine. Green Arrow hits the failsafe Cadmus has installed. As everybody leaves by boat, including Grifter, the island blows up. What they don’t know is Brother Eye is catching a ride with them, hidden in one of their cell phones.

To be continued…

Next: “Future’s End: Teen Titans” issue 1, written by Will Pfeifer.

“Voodoo” vol.2 issue 0 and “Grifter” vol.3 issues 13 – 16

Voodoo written by Joshua Williamson, Grifter issues #13-14 written by Rob Liefeld with dialogue by Frank Tieri; issues #15-16 written by Frank Tieri

Wildstorm Concepts:

These issues serve as more of an epilogue than anything, as the writers needed to close their plot threads. The bigger story all the Wildstorm books had been building to was cancelled by the editorial, putting a hold to it with Superman Annual #1. So there wasn’t much the writers could do in these pages.

Voodoo #0 was the last issue of the book to be published. So while issues #0 were meant to explain the past of each character, the writer is forced to put some scenes in the present to be able to finish his book. Most of the pages are dedicated to showing us Priscilla’s experience when she was kidnapped by the daemonites, when she was turned into a daemonite hybrid before she escaped and got caught by the Black Razors. It’s nothing that we hadn’t been told through dialogue in previous issues. The final pages are what adds new material: Picking up from Priscilla’s psychic vision in which she was told to help Grifter, Priscilla leaves the Black Razors and finds Cole.

Grifter’s book picks up after Cole escaped from Helspont and made it back to Earth. He and Deathblow go separate ways and Cole is contacted by Warick; the person who rescued him from the daemonites when he was kidnapped and given his powers at the beginning of this mess. He explains everything to Cole about his experiments and all the times the daemonites erased his memory. Now that Cole managed to walk away from meeting Helspont, Warick feels he’s ready to join his rebellion. Helspont might have killed all the daemonites that were planning to invade Earth, but there’s still a secret group: Tsavo’s faction, the ones who’ve been screwing with Cole from the start. Warick proposes bringing their actions to the light of day so that they daemonites are exposed, rendering them unable to start all over again. But to find the necessary proof they’re going to need to steal it from the organizations that have them.

Grifter remembers the information that Eos downloaded into his brain; Eos was Helspont’s ship that he found during his visit to the Himalayas, but it is only named now. Cole now knows StormWatch is the most likely to have useful data. But their base is hidden in hyperspace; he needs to figure out a way to get in. This is when Voodoo finds him, offering to join the team.

Guided by Warick, she and Cole infiltrate S.T.A.R. Labs, where they find a prototype teleportation platform that will help Cole reach Eye of the Storm. He says goodbye to Voodoo by stealing a kiss from her; wow! To think they had only known each other for two pages. By the way, this finishes Voodoo’s role in the story. Wow.

Sneaking into StormWatch’s base is no easy task; he’s detected by the ship’s avatar, Charlie. It alerts Apollo and Midnighter, but Cole is able to defeat both of them because his telekinetic abilities have improved just that much. It’s a pretty unbelievable situation. Cole reaches the ship’s main computer, where he learns how to find the info he’s after – through Amanda Waller, her partner during their Team 7 days! She has files on everyone on the planet. He hacks into her computer and downloads all of her data. Cole says goodbye to the computer by installing a virus on it, which angers Charlie enough to hijack Cole’s teleporting coordinates. Instead of going back to Warick, Cole ends up in the middle of the Belle Reve High Security Prison; headquarters of the Suicide Squad, Amanda Waller’s team. And they aren’t happy about having been hacked.

This is here main writer Rob Liefeld leaves the book. By this point the cancellation had already been announced, so writer Frank Tieri didn’t have a lot of time to fix things. In fact, he was only meant to have one issue, but some merciful editor extended it to two.

Cole attempts to escape from the Suicide Squad; it helps that his abilities have improved to the point where he can stop a bullet mid-air. They are too many for him, though, so he’s captured and taken to Waller. He tries to explain to her that he’s in a rebellion movement against the daemonites, but she’s not convinced. She’s met the rebellion’s leader, Warick, before. In one of her missions with the government she had to snuck into the rebellion and studied Warick’s past, learning that he’s been in and out of several mental asylums. This is why Waller dismisses the daemonites as a lie. Cole is astounded to hear about Warick’s past. Now he doesn’t know what to believe.

This is where the last issue begins. There is a scene in which Cole remembers everything he’s gone through; one of the memories shows his girlfriend Gretchen dying in his hands. However, this never happened, she was abducted by the Black Curate. Or maybe it happened in scenes we didn’t get to see. Oh well.

Waller lets Cole go, knowing he will lead her straight to Warick. Cole arranges a meeting with his boss in a zoo, where he demands answers. Warick explains he’s only been in asylums because no one believed his stories about the daemonites, but Cole isn’t convinced… There are too many lies, too many secrets around him. He tries to walk away from the resistance, but Warick can’t let his only weapon go. The two of them start brawling and hitting the crap of each other, but they are interrupted by Waller and several government soldiers. Cole has to decide if he’ll side with Warick of if he’ll hand him in; but before he can make a choice Warick decides to jump into a cage with polar bears and kill himself. Somehow, Cole is moved by this act. If Warick is willing to go that far to protect the rebellion, then it might just be real.

Cole visits his brother’s grave and thinks about his next step. He decides he needs some time as a regular person; time to find himself with no resistances or aliens. Grifter’s tale comes to an end… for now. Helspont is glad Warick and his resistance are out of the way; and now now Grifter is out of his affairs. For now… let it so remain.

Next: Red Hood and the Outlaws issues 12 – 14, written by Scott Lobdell.

“Voodoo” Vol.2 issues 5 – 12

Written by Joshua Williamson

Wildstorm Concepts:      

After having gained the intel she had come to Earth for in the previous issues, Voodoo returns to the ship that brought her and the other daemonites hybrids to Earth. She’s interrupted by the blond daemonite that’s been tracking her: Ruewin. He’s one of the daemonites who don’t believe in the hybrids; he’s a pure blood supremacist who believes only true daemonites should be representing the cause.

Voodoo defeats the pure blood and she’s about to send back the info she’s gathered about Earth’s heroes. But she notices she also stole data about herself from the Black Razors. Opening them, she finds out about her origin as a clone.

Meanwhile, Jess is so enraged by her partner’s death than she’s deemed too emotional and put on temporary leave. But Black Jack convinces her to keep up the fight however she can. She remembers the real Priscilla Kitaen is about to be executed, so they leave in a rush to prevent it.

Enraged against the war council for lying to her about her origin, Voodoo sets the ship to self destruct and destroys the information she had gathered. She uses a teleporter to visit the war council’s ship, hidden behind the moon. She meets the hybrids from that time Green Lantern attacked. Apparently they’re on a hurry to go back to Earth because shit hit the fan after Grifter spoiled the Black Curate’s summoning in “Grifter” issue 8. Voodoo is so mad that she kills one of them, but spares the other because she still believes in the cause.

Jess and Black Jack storm the Black Razor’s facility where Priscilla is being held, hoping to use her help to catch Voodoo. They enter just in time, too, as a scientist approaches Priscilla’s cell. He explains he has orders to move her to a safer facility, which might be a lie to calm Priscilla down before executing her, but it isn’t clear if it’s a lie or the writer just decided to change the orders. Jess and Black Jack help Priscilla break out. She’s heard about the bitch who’s stolen her life because guards around her cell gossiped to each other like high schoolers, so she’s completely behind stopping Voodoo. Her escape is scandalous enough to get Andrew Lincoln’s attention, a guy from the pages of “Blackhawks”. He loves using Wildstorm references for his passwords, like “Spartan” or “Void”.

Voodoo makes it to the war council’s door, but the guards don’t want to let her pass. So her solution is to kill all of them. I’m not sure I buy that the hybrids are so superior that they can kill six normal daemonites all at once, but whatever. She interrupts the war council as they’re discussing their important matters. Apparently Carver (from “Grifter”) was the daemonite’s main leader, so her death has left them lost. They also weren’t expecting Helspont, who they keep calling “Fallen One”, to arrive on Earth so soon, so they’re worried Humans are going to find out about them.

One of the daemonite lords tells Voodoo about her origin and her mission being an excuse to activate her meta-gene. Then he reveals they are unable to duplicate Voodoo’s success in other clones, so she’s of no use to them and they begin to attack her. Voodoo blows a hole in the ship in an attempt to cause a distraction and starts killing all of the clones in production. However, she’s stopped when they make her an offer. After Carver and her Black Curate plan failed, they need a new direction for their invasion; they offer her to be the commander of all the daemonites on Earth. She can’t refuse; even after all the lies she was put through, Voodoo still believes in the prophecy.

Jess, Black Jack and Priscilla visit Voodoo’s ship, or what’s left of it after Voodoo set it to self-destruct. At the same time, Voodoo is teleported right into that very place. Jess tries to capture Voodoo, but she defends herself and kills Black Jack.

Jess is so mad about her new partner’s death that she threatens to kill Priscilla if Voodoo doesn’t turn herself in. Voodoo laughs and says she and Jess are no different; they will do anything to get the job done. This book certainly highlights the psychological aspects a lot more than Grifter. Jess tries to explain to Priscilla that she’s bluffing, but Priscilla is too scared and runs away. By the time she realizes Jess was actually bluffing and tries to make it back, it’s too late. Without her hostage, Jess is killed by Voodoo. It makes one wonder why they spent so many issues on Jess if she was going to be killed off in such a shallow manner. Now that they’re alone, Voodoo and Priscilla talk about their shared past and begin to share a moment, but the Black Razors show up and Voodoo is forced to run away.

Thus beings a new status quo that doesn’t feel quite right. Priscilla begins to be trained by the Black Razors, agreeing to help them track down daemonites because it might get her closer to stopping Voodoo. The whole thing is too rushed and it makes the previous issues feel like a long prologue; this situation should have been set up sooner. Anyhow, Voodoo is able to conduct herself as she sees fit thanks to her new position among the daemonites. She decides to seek out the strongest daemonite of all, Helspont, who has moved to an ancient temple after his fight with Superman in “Superman” issue 8. He has felt Voodoo’s acts of betrayal in the daemonite hivemind, so he’s not sure if he can trust Voodoo to serve him. To test her, he tasks her with retrieving a super weapon that was left by the daemonites in one of Jupiter’s moons. This is the Blue Flame, the item which gave Helspont his powers. Helspont says he can’t go himself because he’s busy building his forces; we’ll see the results of this in “Superman Annual”  issue 1.

While Voodoo boards an old ship, Priscilla finds out about this. She can read Voodoo’s thoughts because of their connection, so she and the Black Razors board a daemonite ship they had found and they go after Voodoo.

Voodoo finds the abandoned daemonite outpost in Jupiter wasn’t quite so abandoned; it’s filled with daemonites that were forced to eat one another to survive, and thus they look orange and deformed. They were the working class, and when the high class left them for dead in that moon they lost faith in the prophecy. However, they still believed in their lord Helspont, so they lead Voodoo to the superweapon, the Blue Flame. It is guarded by giant stone guards, and it is prophesied that only the destined one can pass. Meanwhile, Priscilla and the Black Razors arrive on the planet by crashing their ship.

As the book nears cancellation, the writer puts one last effort in making Voodoo seem more sympathetic instead of what she is; a lead character who is a villain; a very strange and unwise choice. Voodoo thinks maybe her obsession with the cause and all the killing were only her method to distract herself from the pain of having been born the way she had. None of this is very convincing though. Voodoo makes it past the stone guards and reaches the Blue Flame, but she’s interrupted by Priscilla.

The girls make one final attempt to understand each other, but it ultimately fails and Voodoo tries to exterminate both of them with the Blue Flame. She’s stopped by one of the moon’s daemonites, and Priscilla manages to get out of there with the weapon and fly away, leaving Voodoo stranded on the moon.

The series’ ending shows us Priscilla deciding whether to go with her family. I don’t know what her family is, since her mother died when Priscilla was first abducted at age four and she never had a father. But she decides not go, because “normal is overrated.” Brilliant. She stays working with the Black Razors, but suddenly she receives a psychic vision that tells her she’ll have to help Grifter very soon. Lincoln takes the Blue Flame, only to give it to a mysterious character, hoping they will keep it safe and from falling in the wrong hands. Who is this character? Issue 0 hints that the daemonites wanted to infiltrate someone into the Black Razors, so perhaps Lincoln is a daemonite. And following issues show Helspont has given Blue Flame abilities to his soldiers, so it’s likely that he’s obtained the flame from Lincoln.

An epilogue shows us the stranded Voodoo in Jupiter’s moon. She assumed leadership of all the cannibal daemonites in there; she’s been overcome by hate, swearing vengeance on Helspont, the daemonite lords and her sister, rendering all of her development into a sympathetic character null. What an ending, guys, what an ending.

Next: Grifter Vol.3 issues 9 – 12, written by Rob Liefeld and Rob Tieri.

“Blackhawks” issue 6, “Legion Lost” Vol.2 issues 4 – 5 and “Voodoo” Vol.2 issues 1 – 4

Legion Lost written by Fabian Niscieza, Voodoo written by Ron Marz.

Wildstorm concepts:    

 

Blackhawks and Legion Lost should be read as a little prologue introducing the Black Razors in the new DCU. They are wearing all-black here, as they should according to their names, but they wear white armours in “Voodoo”.

“Voodoo” focuses on a daemonite faction that thinks the future of their species lies in creating daemonite-human hybrids. The daemonite council is inclined to the idea of wiping out humans, but they give the hybrids a chance of proving themselves by infiltrating Earth to learn about its superhumans.

Creating the hybrids took a lot of trial and error; none of the humans they kidnapped developed a metagen. This went on until they captured Earth child Priscilla Kitaen when she was four years old. After experimenting on her for years, she embraced the daemonite genes and obtained the ability to shapeshift. In a way, her origin story is similar to Jack Hawksmoor’s in the old WSU. When her powers developed she managed to escape back to Earth, but the daemonites had seen enough. Regular daemonites had never been able to produce wings; the hybrids must definitely be the way to evolution. They have enough information to produce a clone for themselves.

Although only the first clone proved successful, they know it’ll need to be tested to activate her meta-gene, so they send her and other lesser hybrids to Earth. They are equipped with particle generators to adopt any clothing necessary; they can absorb someone’s characteristics after only a few seconds of contact.

The Black Razors are a government organization that hunts aliens. They’ve held the true Priscilla Kitaen prisoner since she returned to Earth a few months ago. They are trying to help her, reverse what the daemonites did to her, but they’re also getting information from her. Two Black Razor agents, Tyler Evans and FBI liaison Jess Fallon are sent after one particular pole dancer: She goes by Voodoo, and they have reasons to believe she’s an alien. In fact, she’s the clone of Priscilla.

The writer, Ron Marz, is the legendary writer of Twilight Emerald, the story that introduced Green Lantern Kyle Rayner. He also worked for Wildstorm on the Cross-Gen imprint. However, he was a last-minute choice for writing Voodoo, one of the later writers brought into the relaunch, which might explain the low quality of the story.

The Black Razors agents try to question Voodoo, but she doesn’t waste much time before killing Tyler and shape shifting to look like him, which will prove her useful in getting closer to Jess. She has feelings for her fellow agent, even though that goes against the rules of the Black Razors.

The book hints at having some kind of message about the sexualization of women and rape culture by showing strong female characters and having Voodoo use her sexuality against men (“They look at me. But they never SEE me”). However, it never manages to say anything concrete and the book wasn’t able to avoid controversy because of all its naked ladies.

Voodoo, using Tyler’s body, sleeps which Jess, and doesn’t seem to mind. I guess this universe’s Voodoo is less rigid about her orientation. She’s trying to find out just how much Earth knows about the daemonites; she’s outraged at the thought that the humans would dissect her as soon as they caught her. She doesn’t know she’s a clone, she thinks she was born a hybrid. Humans seem hateful and weak to her; they deserve to be conquered. Shape shifting might hurt her but she deserves it for being part-human. In her mind she’s just a soldier, following orders because she must. However, as she telepathically catches Jess’s feelings for her partner, she needs to remind herself “she doesn’t care about humans.” Voodoo is conflicted, torn about her morality.

Voodoo’s cover is blown quickly enough as Tyler’s body is found and the Black Razors drop on her. The book tries to have distinct characters among the Black Razors team but again, it fails, because it’s impossible to remember who’s who. One of them is named Choi after Wildstorm writer Brandon Choi. The good guys count with a superhero on their side, Bolton, AKA Black Jack. But it’s never explained who he is, his powers or his origin other than that his powers were given to him by the Black Razors. In the end, Voodoo faces Jess. Voodoo feels Tyler’s love too strongly and can’t bring herself to kill Jess, so she takes Jess’s shape and escapes. This allows her to get into Jess’s head, which gives her precious information about the Black Razors, as we’ll find out later on.

Voodoo visits her hybrid allies and asks them for help now that her cover has been blown. The daemonite’s base was sending coded transmissions into deep space, which catches Green Lantern (Kyle Rayner)’s attention, so he storms the place. Even though the other daemonites drop their human covers to fight him, Voodoo retains her human form. Her bodacious body is enough to turn Green Lantern into a slobbering fool, so she manages to escape. The final scene of the issue shows us a mysterious daemonite is tracking after Voodoo.

Using the information she got from taking Jess’s shape, Voodoo makes it to a Black Razor’s base, where she’s able to steal information about Earth’s superheroes. Is her mission finally over? Unbeknownst to her, her attack motivates the Black Razors to schedule an execution for the real Priscilla Kitaen!

Next: Grifter Vol.3 issues 0 – 8 and Superman Vol.3 issue 6, written by Rob Liefeld, Frank Tieri, Nathan Edmonson and George Perez.