In case you missed the announcement, I'm undertaking a goal of re-reading every issue of Gen 13 for the purpose of blogging about it now that we're about to celebrate the series' 30th anniversary!
Unlike Todd McFarlane's Spawn, which was a massive hit right out of the gate thanks to his iconic work on Spider-Man and his rockstar artist reputation, Brandon Choi, Jim Lee, Alex Garner and Jeff Scott Campbell weren't positive this entry into Lee's "Wildstorm" imprint could go the distance. Lee, of course, had a top-tier reputation thanks to work he'd done for Marvel. Likewise, Choi had established his writing chops with work on Stormwatch, WildC.A.T.s., and Deathblow. Campbell, on the other hand, was almost entirely unknown. Image snapped him up as the result of a talent search -- prior to getting a foot in the door, he'd worked in commercial art, not comics. Garner, also acquired via talent search, was brought on to ink Campbell's pencils. Finally rounding out the roster was Joe Chiodo, who served as colorist. Since he was already coloring everything else Wildstorm published, what was another twenty or so pages per month between friends, right?
But enough history. Let's get to the point. February of 1994 hit, and local comic shop browsers saw this staring back at them from the New Titles racks:
That cover does a great job at selling the book. Every character you need to know is introduced right there, even if you don't recognize them yet, with the flame-haired Fairchild taking center stage as her powers manifest. Yes, it's clearly meant to draw male attention, but what else would the centerpiece of a 90s comic feature besides cheesecake? It's not like Fairchild's the only one showing a little skin either -- Ivana and Bliss (we'll meet them in a little while, don't fret) sport sizeable skin patches too. Campbell's cover isn't subtle, but 'subtle' and 'extreme' didn't share the same planet in 1994.
It all begins, as yellow text blocks inform us, in 1979, on a dark and stormy night just outside the town of Deadwood, Ohio. Population: 3,500. Stephen, Rachel, and their two children are running through the storm, pursued by heavily-armored and and even more heavily-armed soldiers of some kind:
The soldiers open fire on the retreating family, and Rachel is cut down in a hail of bullets fired from the platform of a hovering pursuit vehicle. Screaming in anguish, Stephen watches her fall, then turns his gaze on the men who attacked her. His eyes pulse with a hideous glow, which never portents something good for the one being stared at, and:
Having wiped out the first attack platform, he collapses in pain. He orders his son Matthew to take his sister Nicole and run for the trees, where they'll be out of danger. Unfortunately, Matthew isn't fast enough. He watches in horror as another hover platform descends, this time led by Captain Colby, who says he'll take Stephen himself as he lines up the red dot laser sight on his rifle. With a quiet plea for Stephen to forgive him, Colby reminds the rest of his team they're to take the children alive, and pulls the trigger.
Five times.
We aren't shown what's left of Stephen, but Matthew and Nicole stand, horrified, as their father is blown to pieces.
Fast-forward fifteen years to the present-day of 1994, where Caitlin Fairchild is navigating her sophomore year at Princeton University:
Doesn't look much like the statuesque Amazon on the cover, does she? Don't worry, that part's coming. But yeah, right now, she's kind of a--
Caitlin's poised to graduate from college after only two years thanks to her ridiculous intelligence, and if you didn't realize how stupidly smart she is, the coke-bottle glasses should have clued you in. Since college is all about making sure you have absolutely nothing in common with your room mate, Caitlin's stuck with a messy slut who expects her to "go do some lab work" if she brings a boy back to the dorm.
As the Mickey Mouse clock on the wall ticks ever closer to midnight, there's a knock on Caitlin's door. It's not her room mate, Alexa. It's the "National Security Committee". They need to speak with her right away. It's a matter of urgency requiring her to leave school immediately, without packing her bags, notifying her family, or even telling anyone at Princeton. They'll take care of everything. Of course she accepts, because the one day Caitlin Fairchild was absent from school was the day they talked about Stranger Danger.
Man, do you have any idea how many potential dates I missed out on in college by not using this as my go-to line? Live and learn, y'all. Live and learn.
Cut to Washington, D.C. -- specifically "International Operations' Sci-Tech Bureau Office", where Jack Lynch and Ivana Baiul are having a perfectly civil conversation. Ivana's requisitioned some of Jack's "Black Razor" teams from his Operations division. Jack, whose face is heavily scarred and bears a cybernetic eye in his left socket, wants to know the four-one-one (as the kids say). Ivana blames a higher-up named Craven for having the idea, but Jack remains unconvinced. The last time Sci-Tech used Black Razor teams was in conjunction with Project Genesis.
No, not that one. The one Ivana's been authorized by Craven to restart under the "Gen-13" moniker.
I'm not covering them all, because holy deep-fried corndogs are there a ton, but many characters we're seeing in the early pages of Gen 13 are not making their first appearances on the page. Gen 13 started in 1994, but Jim Lee and Brandon Choi started their Wildstorm Studios imprint in 1992 with WildC.A.T.s and Stormwatch. Just like Spider-Man can show up in an Avengers story, and Green Lantern in an issue of Batman, so can characters from the other Wildstorm/Image properties bounce in and out of Gen 13. Jack Lynch is one such example, and seeing him show up in the pages of this comic if you'd been reading the other Wildstorm books is bad news. Lynch, at this point, is a largely unsympathetic character for anyone familiar with the previous two years of Wildstorm titles. He's a ruthless, calculated, cunning government agent; an elite operative who is part of a former team of top-notch warriors; someone who gets what he wants either though strategic mastery or overwhelming force. The nicest thing readers have seen him do up to this point is not slaughter an entire WildC.A.T.s team when he got the drop on them. Seeing him pop up here is capital-B Bad.
Jack argues bringing back Genesis is too risky, reminds her what happened to the Gen-12 project along with another group called "Team 7," and declares the government would shut them down in a heartbeat if they found out about it. Ivana's not worried -- Craven's calling the shots, and Craven's jealous that Team Youngblood (yes, Rob Liefeld's "Youngblood" . . . much like Marvel, the Image-verse titles all fold back in on themselves) has a team of Super-Powered Beings on call, while I.O. does not. Jack asks when they're starting up the project, and Ivana tells him they started two months ago, and already have their first test subjects. A series of black-and-white photos sprawl out under her well-manicured nails. The nerdy girl with the glasses looks awfully familiar.
After some more back and forth, we learn Jack's interest in this is personal. Something about the Genesis project, and "Team 7" specifically, caused the disappearance of his son. We also learn that instead of screening applicants as they've done in the past, Ivana's just rounded up the kids of the Gen-12 survivors on the assumption they'll be more likely to manifest powers. Keepin' it in the family, yo.
Besides, she's got one Gen-Active on her roster already. His code-name is Threshold, and in Ivana's eyes, if his abilities are indicative of the potential power hiding inside the Gen-12 kids, there's no risk too risky to risk risking. Jack wants to meet this kid. We already are:
Threshold is training with a group of top-tier martial artists to prove what a badass he is, when one of them makes the mistake of hitting him. Learning he isn't perfect angers Threshold, who promptly makes the guy's head pop like a stubborn zit. That seems like a familiar power...but just in case the reader hasn't figured it out yet, this happens:
That's Nicole, aka "Bliss", aka the girl from the opening who watched her parents splattered courtesy of the Black Razor teams. And yes, she's suggesting exactly what you think she's suggesting. Just, you know, on the off-chance they really aren't related.
Also: Threshold claims he isn't one of her boy toys, but he's bare-chested, wearing form-fitting black pants, and coiffed like he just came from the hair salon. He's dressed exactly like the guy standing beside his sister, minus the cheesy bow tie. Fashions speak louder than words, dude, that's all I'm saying...
Jack, now referenced as "Mr. Lynch", meets Threshold as Caitlin arrives at I.O.'s Death Valley facility. He asks Threshold a few questions about the project, and one specifically about his son who was abducted about twenty years ago by a rogue Gen-12, but Threshold stonewalls him by playing the old, "You're from another division, so I don't report to you," card. Lynch isn't perturbed -- he's far from done picking at this particular scab. Meanwhile, after a dizzying day of orientation at her new home, Fairchild wakes up the next morning and heads for the cafeteria only to be run over by a neanderthal in a hospital gown:
Turns out this is "Grunge" Chang, a mucho-muscled but rather lard-brained teenager who arrived a few days ago, along with Roxy Spaulding and Bobby Lane. The four of them comprise "Pod 7", and while the other groups begin to fall apart and fail out of the program, Caitlin, Grunge, Bobby, and Roxy figure out teamwork makes the dream work, and start pulling ahead in the ratings. Roxy and Bobby are showing considerable progress, but Grunge and Caitlin are testing negative for Gen-Factor. Ivana decides to up the dosage of activator drugs in their meals and see what happens. If they "manifest" within the next day, they get to stay on as part of the team. If they don't . . . well, "disposal" doesn't sound all that enjoyable to me.
Early the next morning, Caitlin awakes with a throbbing headache. After puking up her guts, she goes to find the infirmary. As she roams the halls, unsure she's heading in the right direction, she finds the automatic doors have lost power. She pries them open and keeps searching, unaware she's left finger-sized indentations in the reinforced doors.
After a short time, she finds herself in a computer lab. Taken with the tech, which she has only read about and never seen, she sits at the keyboard and sees her father's name on the terminal. Before she can continue, she's startled by Grunge, who drops in with Roxy to explain they sometimes sneak in here at night to have a smoke. Unfortunately, in her surprise, Caitlin's elbow smacked a silent alarm, and the guards soon arrive, demanding to know what the three are doing out of bed and in a restricted area.
While radioing for backup, the guard punches out Grunge, then knocks Caitlin to the floor, holding her at gunpoint and again demanding to know what they're doing accessing the computer. When Caitlin tries to answer, he smacks her down again, hitting hard enough this time to draw blood and shatter her glasses. Suddenly, blue lightning erupts from her eyes, surrounding her with a strange cerulean aura. She stands up, unleashes a single punch which lays out the guard despite his full body armor, and then...
Just like that, our little Caitlin Fairchild has hit her growth spurt. What happens next? Well, that will have to wait until issue #2...
The book ends with a few words from editor Jeff Mariotte about who everyone is behind the scenes who brought the book to life, a coupon you can clip (which accounts for basically the bottom 1/4th of one page of the comic) and combine with three other later ones to score a special ashcan edition of Gen 13 #0. They will only accept the actual pages from the actual comics, so don't send photocopies or any of that nonense, you understand?
This is a brilliant marketing strategy on Image's part, because nobody who is serious about collecting comics is going to cut up their issues, but neither will they risk missing out on the ashcan, making this "free" Gen 13 promo cost a total of $18--four issues of the comic at $1.95 each to cut up, four more issues of the comic at $1.95 each to keep in pristine condition, then a further $2.00 for shipping and handling. How many issues of the Gen 13 limited series were sacrificed to the ashcan gods? I've no idea, but I was never willing to tear up my own stuff, and I wasn't rich enough to buy the same book twice just to take scissors to it, so I never did it.
Finally, there's a four-page sketchbook from the pens of both Lee and Campbell, showing the development of Fairchild, Grunge, and Roxy, along with some preliminary artwork showing the four as a team, and a t-shirt design drawing from Deathmate Black, where Grunge, Fairchild, Bobby, and Roxy all made their official first appearances. The book closes with ads for upcoming titles Kindred #1, Deathblow #3, and finally a notice of the third leg of the "Killer Instinct Tour" where various Image artists showed up at comic stores around California for meet-and-greets, signings, and other events.
So, that's Gen 13 #1. All in all, a pretty solid start to the series. There are plenty of questions raised by the story, tons of characters to get to know, people who are obviously good (the Gen-13 kids), people who are clearly evil (Threshold, Ivana, probably Bliss), and people like Lynch whose moral compass is not yet defined. We get an angle with Lynch's missing son as just one of the many things that may (or may not) be addressed in the future. There's plenty of room for this world to expand.
Campbell's still finding his footing, and a lot of his artwork shows it. I'm not sure if this is due to the "Image effect" started by Liefeld or not, but a lot of the characters have strangely-proportioned anatomy. Witness especially Caitlin's roommate, who has ankles too small to bear her weight, and Threshold who has both a Schwarzenegger physique combined with hyper-developed reflexes. Also like Liefeld, Campbell struggles with drawing feet, but only at some angles. Caitlin's look fine in the final two-page spread, while Bliss's a half-dozen pages prior are posed in a way that would cause considerable pain in real life.
Choi and Lee write decent enough dialog, although they're still working out the kinks on this front as well. I get the feeling the two haven't found a way to 'mesh' their styles yet, even if one of them is handling the plotting while the other one handles the actual text. It's OK, they'll get there.
It's far from perfect, but for a first issue, this absolutely blows away the likes of Youngblood #1 and other premiere issue Image fare. The premise is basically, "What if a shadowy corporation could make mutants out of ordinary teenagers?", which, given Jim Lee spent a few years working on X-Men titles, isn't all that surprising. Despite that, he and Choi still managed to come up with a group of kids who aren't obvious clones of other Marvel heroes even if they share some super powers.
Final Judgement:
out of .
Thanks, @blewitt! We'll be using your mug frequently, so if you want to see more Blewitt, more bits and pieces of scanned comic, and more of my pointless drivel, hit that upvote button like Caitlin hit that security guard, and I'll see you back here next week for more Gen 13!