Credits: Written by Brandon Choi, pencilled by Tom Coker, Juvuan Kirby with Ryan Odagawa inked by Troy Hubbs with Richard Friend and edited by Johnathan Peterson.
Cast: Damocles, Sigma, Damocles, his wife and daughter Seela, Simon Tsung ,Ah-Yee Tsung, Deathblow, GRifter, Jack Lynch, Gen-13, Marc ‘Backlash’ Slayton, Ethan McCain, Celia Tsung, Spenser, Jocelyn Andrews, Maggie Monroe PI, Mrs Carr, Zach McCoy, One Eyed Jack, Rake, Hardball, Jade and the Sword of Damocles.
Plot: A parallel world is dying a slow preventable death by environmental catastrophe. A man called Damocles says goodbye to his wife and daughter Seela before he embarks on a endeavour to take resources from another world to revitalise their own. His wife has doubts, but Damocles only sees that he can save the world for his daughter.
Later, at a lab, Damocles is about to put his plan into action, when he is confronted by Sigma, who tells him he has to stop and killing a world to save their own is wrong. Damocles panics and there’s gunfire and the machine Damocles was working on activates, Something goes wrong and the devastation travels to another universe which is wiped out and some of it washes back in and Damocles’ world, his colleagues, his family, all gone.
Berkley, California, another Earth. Simon Tsung wakes from a nightmare, next to his concerned wife Ah-Yee. She dismisses it as a stress induced dream and suggests a date night and some dim sum. She falls asleep, but Tsung is left with one and only one thought, Damocles is coming.
We now cut to group of former Team-7 survivors, who are dealing with the theft of the Gen-Factor from their bodies. These men (Jack Lynch, mentor to Gen-13, Deathblow, Grifter who is a W.I.L.D.Cat member and Backlash the former trainer of StormWatch) are heading towards San Francisco and looking for Tsung to get some answers.
Berkley University and Ethan McCain is walking to organic chemistry class with his buddy Spenser. Spenser asks why he’s taking orgo, but then sees Ethan’s crush Jocelyn Andrews and understands why a physics and history major is now taking this class. This is compounded when Ethan gets himself a chemical burn in class. But it stopped hurting quite quickly, though he still gets it bandaged. Outside, later in the day we see that he’s been observed by Maggie Monroe a PI working for someone called Mrs Carr who she placates about her progress. After knocking bad a frat boy, Maggie watches Celia Tsung pick up Ethan and drive him home where he lives and begins to get to work with Dr Tsung.
Down the street, what we can assume are Kaisen Gamorra’s Hunter Killers are preparing to attack, checking on the status of Tsung’s family. They comment that although local records put Ethan as an adopted son, this was not the case when he lived in Hong Kong. They stay waiting as Ethan goes in and then joins Tsung in his basement lab. Ethan gets into his VR outfit and talks into the simulator. Tsung programs a scenario that simulates super-power manifestations as Ethan uses these powers (generic 90’s types, shields and energy blasts and all that) and then on the next level, an image of Damocles is part of the program and handily defeats Ethan, who starts glowing with some kind of energy manifestation. The Hunter Killers pick up on this and go into action, followed by Zach who is there to recruit Ethan for a fraternity. The manifestation ends, but Ethan doesn’t know what happened and he is explaining that he’s told Zach some of the (rather hush hush) stuff that Tsung is working on. Before Tsung can get too upset Zach arrives and learns that Tsung (also a teacher at Berkley) is his stepfather. The hits just keep on coming as the HKs break in. Ethan starts glowing again, realising that he is manifesting powers outside of VR and blasts several of the HKs into pieces. The HKs recognise Tsung and are ready to grab them both, but are counter attacked by Hardball, Jade, One-Eyed Jack and Rake from the previous issue and this is where we end up in the same place as the previous issue. As the new arrivals battle the HKs for the right to either kill or kidnap Tsung and Ethan, the Sword of Damocles makes his entrance.
Notes: More than the last issue, this felt like part of a greater whole. Partway through the issue, we find a group of people we’re not really introduced to being halfway through their own story. I had context clues, but some people and some events were a complete mystery to me. It should have confused and irritated me, but honestly it really didn’t and it made me feel like this was part of greater world that I was just dipping into. We have some parallel stories happening with them converging on the Tsung’s house. It does have one of those clueless teen hero tropes, halfway between Peter Parker and Luke Skywalker, replete with armoured bad guy with as yet unknown connection. More than the previous issue, this feels like the start of something, we have a status quo, a supporting cast and secrets about to come to light and despite how cliched the story was in places, I am in for this.
Verdict: Writing 3 out of 5– It’s hard to ignore all of the tropes here, it seems to hit every branch of the hero in waiting tree and that’s okay, because we’re also given hints and bits and pieces of information that draws you in a little. If this was episode 1 of a TV show, it’d be doing exactly what it needs to do. The fact is though, it’s a comic and it takes advantage of that expectation of connectivity and the occasional bit of non-linear story-telling. We get fun characters that we want to see more of and there’s clearly more to come.
Art: 3 out of 5 – Once you get used to Tom Coker’s stylised work, it’s actually very good, the reason it drops to 3 is that we get fill in artists that are just jarring enough to make you feel that someone added pages from another story and it does disrupt the narrative flow. But the character designs are good and the opening pages are fantastic in how they set up a mood.
Overall: 6 out of 10 – All in all it ends pretty well and I was tempted to read ahead, which is as good as you can get at the start of a big story. Looking forward to where we got from here because I honestly don’t remember much past here from when I first read it over 20 years ago.
Next Time: Superman vs Doomsday, round one.
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