Credits: Written by Alan Moore, pencils by Travis Charest and Ryan Benjamin, inks by Richard Friend, Sal Regla, Sandra Hope and John Tighe and edited by Mike Heisler
Cast: WildC.A.T.S. (Spartan, Maul, Grifter, Mr Majestic, Warblade, Voodoo, Zealot and Void) Union, Marc ‘Backlash’ Slayton, Cybernary, Gen-13 (Jack Lynch, Fairchild, Freefall and Burnout), StormWatch (Battalion and Fahrenheit), Mother-1 and Kaizen Gamorra.
Notes: In the aftermath of the recent battle, Spartan of the WildC.A.T.S. starts to have flashes of memory that seemed to predate his existence as Hadrian. Elsewhere on the island of Gamorra, the tidal wave caused by the shift in the moon’s position approaches as Cybernary and her rebels attack Kaizen Gamorra’s tower, but the wave catches up with them. Fortunately the heroes arrive and Cybernary is saved by Backlash after the wave hits. Freefall of Gen-13 questions why the wave didn’t do more damage. This is answered by the arrival of Mr Majestic, member of the second generation of WildC.A.T.S. and like Zealot, an alien from Khera. <Majestic is WildStorm’s Superman-alogue> who points out that he used his equivalent of heat vision. Freefall and Maul notice that Kaizen Gamorra had escaped his tower.
Kaizen faces Spartan and challenges him to remember. Hadrian has more flashes and remembers his like. He remembers being Yon Kohl, a Kherbium like Zealot and Mr Majestic. He remembers being the 1930’s adventurer John Colt, until something went wrong and John was killed by Mr Majestic at John’s own request. Lord Emp (Jacob Marlowe, the founder of WildC.A.T.S. and the creator of the Hadrian/Spartan robot) had John Colt’s personality/mind placed into the first Hadrian’s body. He took the name Spartan, because he was the model for the Spartan Guards on Khera. With his whole life now accessible to him, he wonders how Kaizen knows this. Then Kaizen reveals that he replaced the original Kaizen Gamorra and is actually the original John Colt. The two then battle one another, the original John Colt left for dead and bitter against the mind of John Colt in this mechanical body who was more in line with what Colt stood for.
The fight gets more savage, but is ended by Mr Majestic finishing the fight by vapourising Gamorra. Now with Gamorra dead, the threat on the moon becomes the more pressing issue. The heroes are demoralised and exhausted, but Spartan walks up and gives them a stirring speech and tells them they can shoot for the moon. Seriously he actually says that.
Notes: Where the actual hell did this come from? Sorry, just had to get the one out there. The majority of the characters in this crossover make sense. Several of the heroes have links to Team-7 and are connected that way and StormWatch are the players on the other side. Kaizen Gamorra and Cybernary are there because it’s set on Gamorra island and it’s all connected to Sigma and Damocles. The only characters who don’t really have a place here are the ones from the first WildStorm book, so maybe this is the place where they solve that problem? The problem is that it all seems to come from nowhere. One minute the vaguely asian coded Kaizen Gamorra is an updating of the yellow peril trope (a particularly nasty racist tradition) and the next he’s the withered husk of the 1930’s hero John Colt? I haven’t read this era of WildC.A.T..S. in a long time, but I don’t remember that this was signposted at all. The emotional stuff feels tacked on, so it does take the joy away from it and for Alan Moore, this feels like a clunky way to get the crossover back on track,.
Verdict: Writing – 4 out of 5: This is Alan Moore, a bad comic of his would get 4 out of 5. Which is unfortunately what we have. The whole Hadrian is the mind of John Colt in a robot body is slipped into this story and rushed into the final battle with the body of John Colt who’s been posing as the WildStorm universe’s big bad. It just doesn’t work for me unfortunately.
Art – 2 out of 5: The art is excellent, but only in places, Travis Charest is a rare talent and his work is beautiful, but paired against Ryan Benjamin (a quality artist, but a very different style you have you admit) and 4 different inkers, the art goes from great to okay, to meh.
Overall: 6 out of 10: Rushed and choppy in quality, this has interesting ideas in it, but isn’t really maintaining the quality that Moore’s run has had in the past, or the rest of this crossover, but at least we are now moving towards the end.
NEXT TIME: The Legacy of a fallen hero
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