Credits: Written by Warren Ellis, pencilled by Randy Green, inked by Bob Wiacek, John Tighe, Mark Irwin and Richard Friend. The issue was edited by Michael Rockowitz.
Cast: The Sword, One Eyed Jack, Rake, Hardball, Jade, Damocles, Kaizen Gamorra, the dead clone of Sigma, Nikolas Adnreyvitch ‘Winter’ Kamarov and Dr Sung.
Plot: On a parallel world, a man now known only as The Sword speaks to bounty hunters that he has sent after a creature known as the Qeelocke. This quarter, led by One Eyed Jack admit their failure and hope that The Sword decides not to torture and kill them. Their excuse was that Qeelocke was being defended by beings possessing the Gen-Factor. The Sword doesn’t believe it, knowing that Gen-Factor can only be derived from something unique. Then his master Damocles arrives and agrees, saying that this may be proof of Sigma being on this other world. Sigma is the person that Damocles blames for the death of his family.
Then The Sword and his hunters arrive on the WildStorm Earth and kill a London family in order to use their bodies to creative the machinery that he had to leave behind to bring his team. He sets the equipment to find the next source of Gen-Factor activation, which should be Sigma, since he would always be activating. The machine gives them a location and they are off.
They arrive at the rogue nation Gamorra, which is under the rule of Kaizen Gamorra, who is using Gen-Factor extract to activate a clone of Sigma, with little success. When The Sword arrives Kaizen thinks on his feet and aims these newcomers at one of the scientists that worked on Kaisen’s Gen-Factor experiment, a Doctor Sung. Kaisen also manipulates Sword to go after a threat to him, Winter who is a member of Stormwatch, the UN crisis intervention team.
We then see them split off and as they leave Kaizen Gamorra sends some of his Hunter/Killers (robots of cyborgs, it’s unclear) after Tsung, expecting that Winter will either kill or debilitate The Sword, so he can experiment on him and gain his dimensional travel ability. Winter (in New York) is walking along and is attacked by The Sword and despite his power and skill, is ultimately defeated by him. The Sword then creates a doorway to Tsung’s location in San Francisco. He arrives to see his creatures battling Hunter Killers and decides that is enough and slices through the HKs and strides into Tsungs home and the expectation for Tsung is that it’s about to get so much worse.
Notes: We’ll get this out of the way first, several of these comics will be written by Warren Ellis. There have been many allegations against him. Many could be considered an understatement. I’m not going to talk about that, or about him as a person, I’m not qualified in many respects, nor was it something I knew about at the time. Do these things need to be talked about? Yes, but that’s not what this is about.
So, WildStorm more than the other Image imprints had sort of it’s own mileu. Rather than pure costumed heroics, it had themes of trans-humanism and the worry of a hi-tech cold war. These weren’t super heroes, but black ops and post cold war action. Spy-fi is another way of putting it and it ended up having a different feel to other shared universes. One of the common threads was the Gen-Factor and it’s effects on the survivors of Seal Team 7 and their descendants. Members of Stormwatch, WildC.A.T.S., Wetworks and Gen-13 were included in this number as well as the character known as Deathblow. It unified many series and made connections where they might not be so obvious and I think we are better for it.
This story though, takes place mostly through new characters, Damocles and The Sword of Damocles. There are all sorts of mythological/theological imagery and themes. The Sword himself is dressed very fetish priest like. It all feels like build up to something, rather than a thing in and of itself, which I suppose for a prequel is actually a good thing. What was happening in San Francisco before The Sword showed up? Who is the man next to Tsung? I’m guessing we have to wait to find all that out and I’m here for that.
Verdict: Writing 3 out of 5 – We’re given the nuts and bolts of the story, the what happens and the how. We also get the usual off hand sci-fi tidbits that Ellis is famous for. The one thing we don’t get is character. We don’t understand anyone or their real motivations and it does make it a hollow, if well told story.
Art: 3 out of 5 – Randy Green has a near cartoony/manga style which lends itself nicely to a story with regular looking as well as bizarre characters and while it’s not entirely to my taste, does the job well enough and the visual design of The Sword is great.
Overall: 6 out of 10 – Thin and shallow in places, regardless this held my interest and made me want to know more and in so doing performs its job perfectly. I’m looking forward to reading more.
Next Time: Superman does PR while the team takes a kicking.
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