As we saw in Issue #5 of the limited series, John Lynch resigned from International Operations in spectacular fashion, and took his five teenage protégés with him. As Fairchild, Burnout, Grunge, and Freefall make tracks out of California and into Oregon, they're already having difficulty getting along:
What about Rainmaker, you ask? Well, she would be with them . . . if she'd been involved in the story when this issue was written. Despite taking place after Gen 13 #5, this book was written in tandem with issue #1, and published to coincide with the release of Gen 13 #2, the issue where Rainmaker joined the squad. If you want it to make sense chronologically, just assume Rainmaker flew off under her own powers to return to her tribe while the other four decided on a slightly more incognito method of transportation.
And by 'incognito', I of course mean 'stealing a van', because that's not liable to cause trouble for anyone or anything.
So, Grunge and Roxy are hungry, Burnout and Fairchild are arguing over the map, and now Burnout's making a power play to be team leader. They take a pit stop at a gas station to fuel up on both petrol and snacks, and ask directions. After confirming they are, in fact, nowhere near Milwaukie, despite Oregon being Caitlin's old stomping grounds where she used to waitress as a student, Burnout races back to tell the group about Fairchild's mistake. He doesn't get far before trouble shows up:
An armored woman looking for "Langston" (a name which would only be familiar to readers of Stormwatch, another Wildstorm title) teleports into the middle of downtown, uh, three-hours-from-Portland, and starts raising hell. Burnout sees her fire on the police officer confronting her, assumes she was sent by Ivana to track the group down, and decides to kick her ass.
The mysterious woman (who, it should be noted, is never named) doesn't have any idea what he's babbling about, just that he's interfering with her search for Langston, and gives Bobby a taste of her fusion blaster. Caitlin and Grunge emerge from the station just in time to see Burnout go down. Grunge hurls a can of Willer Lite beer (Grunge obviously has a fake ID, because none of these kids is yet twenty-one) at the armored woman, causing her to slip and land on her ass:
What follows is a multi-page fight scene where the woman in power armor trades blows and insults with the kids as they subject one another to escalating levels of abuse. Finally, Grunge throws her into a nearby fuel truck, Roxy drops a cigarette, and we realize scriptwriters Brandon Choi and Jim Lee really love that iconic scene from Robocop:
Finally subdued by Fairchild ripping out her armor's power cords, the Gen13 bunch hops back into their mini bus and hightails it out of there while still arguing about being lost. But don't worry: they were nice enough to leave a note for the police telling them the woman was responsible for blowing up the gas station and all the other property damage. Fairchild also took the Looney Tunes route of immobilizing the stranger with an uprooted stop sign so she couldn't fix her gear.
We close with a text box reminding us to check out Stormwatch #9 to learn who Langston is, and a reminder that Gen 13 has its own ongoing monthly mini-series too. Why on earth you would have sent away for a copy of Gen 13 1/2 without knowing anything about the regular book is beyond me, but it was the 90s, so the collector's bubble was inflating like the gum in Roxy's mouth on the cover.
This is easily the worst issue of Gen 13 yet. Part of the problem stems from it being a partial issue (it's 28 pages, and only half of those are actual story -- the rest is a four-page interview with the book's creators, a few ads, and a sketchbook showcasing some early ideas for the characters), part stems from it being the 2nd or maybe the 3rd issue of the book ever written, and the rest of it I'm laying directly on "H. K. Proger" (an alias used by Bill Kaplan for his comic book work), whose dialog here is so awful I wouldn't trust him to script a silent film.
The art is sub-par as well. Neither Ryan Benjamin's pencils nor the techniques of the four separate inkers of this short story come anywhere close to capturing the team properly. Benjamin's clearly taken lessons at Liefeld academy, as he can't draw feet to save his life. He's also over-estimated Freefall's chest by several cup sizes. Seriously, she's not that stacked, guys -- why is it so damn hard for artists to capture the build that makes Roxy Spaulding look like Roxy Spaulding and not some thirty-five-year-old bimbo cosplaying as a teenager? Here's what I'm talking about:
Freefall's proportions are all wrong here. Her thighs and calves are way too big, her chest is too large, and her facial structure is completely out of whack. I mean, kudos on that 'breaking out of frame' pose on Grunge which does look good, but compare Freefall's arms (which are drawn properly) to her legs: she's built like a gym rat bodybuilder who only shows up for leg day.
This one is 99% filler -- the remaining 1% has to do with why this woman is hunting Langston, which would only matter if you were keeping up with the other Wildstorm books -- so unless you're someone who read Stormwatch religiously, or a nerd like myself who just has to have everything with Gen 13 stamped on it, you can skip this one in favor of Gen 13 #0 which we'll talk about in the next installment. If you must add this to your long box, for the love of god, don't fork out the inflated asking price for the original edition, which was a Wizard exclusive that came with its own Certificate of Authenticity. Image re-printed it in 1997 as Gen 13 -1 (that's "negative one"), in a smaller format which omits most of the ads and the entire interview but retains the two-page sketchbook:
The cover of -1 also confusingly includes Rainmaker despite her not being in the story, which is about the only mistake 1/2 managed not to make. Yeesh!
Gen 13 1/2 / Gen 13 -1 is a perfect example of what made 90s comics so utterly . . . utterly . . . 90s. While the interview with Lee, Campbell, and Choi by the staff of Wizard is a neat read, and the sketchbook pages (all two of them that there are) are nice little bonus features, the story is nothing more than the bumbling filler you might expect from a project like this. Lee and Choi clearly had a story in mind, but Proger turns in a dud of a script, and Benjamin, as previously noted, can only draw half the characters properly. Did a story this small really need four inkers working on it, guys? I mean, seriously, were the deadlines just that tight? I don't know. I'm not in the biz. I'm just a reader, a fan, an ordinary schlub who still has both books in his collection because shut up and stop looking at me like that, @blewitt!
Now, interestingly enough, this isn't where the story ends. Critical response to this issue was mixed to say the least, and a few years later Jim Lee and Brandon Choi went back for a do-over. The original five-issue miniseries, issue 1/2, and issue 0 had all gone out of print and were difficult for new readers to acquire, so Wildstorm published Gen 13 Backlist, a trade paperback collection of those seven issues. Virtually every panel of the miniseries and issue 0 was left intact, but everything pertaining to 1/2 got chucked in the bin. Ryan Benjamin was given a second chance to pencil the issue, and this time around he does a far better job visualizing the characters. The issue is now inked solely by Saleem Crawford, rather than being split between four artists, which added some much-needed cohesion to the artwork. Finally Choi himself re-scripted the story, so the characters now sound and behave much more in keeping with how they had been presented up to that point in the chronology.
This do-over is the best thing that could have happened to issue 1/2. Burnout's still pissy, but he's not a complete dick making a power play to be team leader. Caitlin's sense of direction in the re-write hasn't failed her, as Bobby's humbled to learn when they stop for directions at the gas station. Here's how the scene is presented in the original incarnation:
And here's the way Choi and Lee retconned it in the updated edition:
Most significantly, the letter Caitlin wants to send is to her aunt and uncle to let them know she'll be coming home in a few days. While the idea of Caitlin pilfering from Ivana's bank account to cover the cost of the stolen van is amusing, this change makes issue 1/2 tie in better to issue 0, as we'll see next week. It's an alteration only possible in hindsight, since issue 0 wasn't even in the planning stages when Choi and Lee originally outlined this story, but it works better.
Oh, and our mysterious time-hopping Traveler now has a name! She identifies herself as, "designate Loran". Still no explanation about who Langston is, or why Loran is trying so hard to find him, but since neither of them shows up in the the Gen 13 books again, we can let this slide. Also, she now refers to everyone as "Devols" instead of "Primitives". Not a big deal, but worth pointing out.
Everything about this edition of the story is superior to the original incarnation. Events play out in the same order, just with better visuals and tighter pacing. It's a shame they never printed this version as a single issue, because the only way to read it is in the aforementioned Gen 13 Backlist TPB, or the deluxe Gen 13: Starting Over hardcover omnibus published by DC in 2022. You could also pick up the massive 528-page Wildstorm Archives: Gen 13 softcover, which features both iterations of the story for some reason, and also collects everything from issue 1 of the mini-series up through issue 13 of the monthly series, but it's all in black and white. It looks fabulous, and I recommend it highly, but the lack of color could be a non-starter for some. Your call.
Final Rating:
out of
You can bump that up to three "Surprised Blewitts" out of five for the Choi-scripted do-over. Either way this is a weak story, but the updated version is at least an average Gen 13 experience, while the original can safely be skipped if you're looking for corners to cut either with reading or collecting.
Thanks for reading! Make sure you drop by next time when I take a look at Gen 13 #0, the other bridge-the-gap-to-the-monthly-series book. As always, if you see something here that you just have to add to your own collection, make sure you reach out to other members of the #comics collective. Folks like @blewitt and @cryplectibles do this sort of thing for a living, and you wouldn't believe what they've got hidden away in their back rooms!