Michael's Long Box: The Great Gen13 Re-Read, Part 4 - Gen13 #4 (May 1994, Image Comics)

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In case you missed the announcement, I'm undertaking a goal of re-reading every issue of Gen13 for the purpose of blogging about it now that we're celebrating the 25th anniversary of its publication! Yes, I am crazy. No, I am not going to share--dig up your own insanity.

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So we've arrived at issue #4 of our five-part mini-series. Dig that cover, yo: for the first time, Gen13 gets its very own wrap-around extravaganza. If you haven't already, I recommend opening that one in a new tab so you can bask in all the glory of that busy battle scene between the Gen13 kids and a horde of Black Razors; the scaled-down version above doesn't do it justice.

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We open with a re-cap courtesy of Fairchild:

So now, looking down the barrels of Lynch's Black Razors and Ivana's Keepers, all of whom are waiting for Lynch's order to start popping caps, the nigh-invulnerable Caitlin Fairchild is forced to wonder who's going to come to her rescue.

Lynch, thankfully, decides to verbally spar with Ivana, which gives Fairchild and Pitt time to get to know one another. Ivana wants the two of them dead, but Lynch says he's got the situation under control and will detain everyone until the morning, when he can remove them all from the Project Genesis facility without bloodshed. This infuriates Ivana, who orders Lynch's own Black Razors to put him under arrest, and order with which they cannot comply because Ivana isn't their commanding officer. Pitt and Fairchild display incredible tactical sense by agreeing they need to do something. And enraged Ivana gives them an opening:

Fairchild takes down Ivana and both Keepers with a leg sweep, and declares she and Pitt are there to stop Ivana once and for all. Ivana replies that Fairchild is just as delusional as her father was (so Ivana knew Caitlin's dad...interesting...) and calls a red alert to Central Command. Literally the instant she ends the transmission, another door opens revealing a squad of eight Heavy Weapons keepers who apparently just stand around in full combat gear at all times on the other side of this door in case someone calls Code Red to Cen-Comm.

Fairchild opines they might be in trouble.

Cut to several levels up, where Burnout, Rainmaker, Grunge, and Roxy are peering down the enormous hole torn in the floor. Rainmaker intuits it had to be Fairchild, since she doesn't know anybody else who could do this kind of damage. Grunge can't wrap his head around Rainmaker's name, which becomes a running joke in this issue. Roxy, meanwhile, has found Timmy and learned the truth. From down in the hole come the sounds of gunfire, punching, and, uh, whatever "SKRAASH" is supposed to represent.

Since diving head-first into trouble was what got them all captured in the first place, Burnout decides the best course of action is to hurl a bunch of super-heated plasma down the hole and hope for the best. Rainmaker assists, surrounding Burnout's fireball with a bunch of compressed air so as to make the most ridiculous flash-bang ever, and they chuck it down the shaft on a jet steam so it will fly even faster.

Do I even have to get into the logistics of why this is about the most terrible option imaginable? Their own team mate and would-be rescuer is presumably at the bottom of that shaft, and is likely right in the path of this compressed ball of explosive fire. Did none of these kids ever see Die Hard, for god's sake?

Thankfully, due to comic book logic, only the heavy weapons squad is injured in the resultant holocaust and the kids don't accidentally sterilize the entire sub-level. Roxy floats the group down with her ability to manipulate gravity, and they find Fairchild and Pitt holding their own against Ivana's goons. They join the melee, with Burnout and Rainmaker flinging fire and compressed air everywhere, Roxy smashing soldiers into one another in mid-air, and Grunge showing off his fancy martial arts prowess to dispatch a group without even resorting to his powers.

It doesn't go quite the way he planned...

Oh no, the Grunge-man's down and out just one issue after he manifested his powers! Ah well, tip out a 40oz for our favorite shredded-jeans-and-unlaced-boots doofus, and--

Wait, what?

Never mind, Grunge apparently has a Wolverine-style healing factor as well. That's convenient. Also mondo rad.

Several floors up, the completely unguarded Timmy peers into the hole, listening to all the ruckus. One of Ivana's Keepers finds him and pulls a gun. Timmy screams for help, and from several stories down, Pitt leaps up, beats the Keeper into submission, takes Timmy in his arms, punches through walls until he finds an external one, and leaps off into the night. Sure, he left all of his new friends behind, but he justifies it because they're good warriors.

Um...they're a bunch of teenage kids, you 'roid reject. Gods aloft, do I hate Pitt, whose only purpose here has been to be a Deus ex Machina. Thankfully he bounds off back into Dale Keown's books and doesn't grace the pages of Gen13 for the rest of this mini-series (and possibly never again...I don't recall them ever crossing paths in the monthly books either, but I could be wrong).

Lynch, meanwhile, is assessing their chances against Ivana's guards and doesn't like it. They've got some incredible powers, but there's no teamwork, no coordination. Without this, they'll get themselves killed. Fortunately, Lynch is prepared for everything, and with the push of a button, he summons up his own wild card: a team of power-armor-clad troops called Black Hammers, who look like Space Marine Terminators from Warhammer 40,000 and can apparently...teleport, or something? I guess? I mean, how the hell else do they get there so fast?

In any case, Lynch orders them to lay down suppressing fire while he and the kids escape through a shielded blast door. As they travel, Lynch explains he's on their side. In fact, he knew Caitlin's father as well. Grunge and the rest of the team aren't so keen on trusting another government suit, but Fairchild points out he's the only friend they seem to have at the moment, and they'd best keep running.

In a deluxe, two-page spread, Lynch explains who he is and how he came to be. This is information we'd already know if we'd been keeping up with other Wildstorm titles prior to Gen13, especially WildC.A.T.s., but long story short, Lynch ran with a group called "Team 7", who were high-level operatives for I.O. Think of them like Dutch and his team from Predator: a group of badass killing machines who are really good at their job. I.O.'s director wanted them better, so he exposed them to the Gen Factor. They all manifested different abilities, but many of them died or killed themselves during the process. The members of Team 7 became known as Gen-12--the Gen-13 kids are their children (or at least as many as I.O. could round up). I didn't realize it until re-reading this issue, but we see how Lynch got those scars on his face and lost his eye--by clawing it out himself. YIKES!

We flash back to issue 1, where Nicole and Matthew are orphaned at the hands of the Black Razors as Lynch explained the members of Gen-12 went into hiding to escape I.O. Not all of the made it, and those who didn't were killed and had their children rounded up and brainwashed into serving I.O., which explains Bliss and Threshold being under Ivana's sway.

Lynch leads the group to a waste disposal chute which will lead them outside the facility, and tells them he'll catch up with them later. Right now...

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You can almost hear the dramatic music, can't you? And maybe Princess Leia yelling, "Into the garbage chute, fly-boy!"? Yeah, me too.

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This issue's probably the most important in the mini-series so far, since it answers a lot of questions we've had since the beginning. Chiefly, who are these kids, why are they important, and why is Lynch so interested in them? The action is hot and heavy for most of the book, with lots of combat, and if you overlook the sudden arrival of reinforcements on both sides, there's not much to complain about. The last few pages are all exposition and info dump, but it's important stuff so I'll let it pass.

Grunge is clearly the favorite of one of the three people scripting (Choi, Campbell, and Lee all share story credit for this issue just like the last one), as he makes all the awful puns and terrible jokes, though the best line in the book comes from Rainmaker, who refers to Grunge as a "reality-impaired Barney" on page five, after he calls her "Windbreaker". We also see the last of Pitt, which is a good thing as far as I'm concerned. I said it once already, but I'll say it again. Eat it, Pitt!

Campbell's artwork continues to improve with each book, so that's a good sign. One thing he's really good at is tackling panels with complex layouts and multi-page spreads, and this issue has those starting from the cover. Burnout and Rainmaker still feel like second-string characters at this point and, in fact, two different people wrote letters asking if Rainmaker was going to be a permanent part of the team, with one opining that she might either betray the group or get killed. While I know from personal experience that neither one of these is the case, I can totally understand where this reader is coming from--she wasn't introduced until issue #2, and she's gotten far less page time and development than the rest of the group as a result.

My suspicion is that Choi, Lee, and Campbell don't have any idea how to write her yet, and are leaving her (and, to a lesser extent, Burnout) more amorphous while they flesh out Fairchild, Freefall, and Grunge. She'll eventually come into her own, but yeah, right now she feels very much like a fifth wheel.

So there's Gen-13 #4 in a nutshell. I know this review isn't as long as previous ones have been, but honestly, while there's a lot going on in this issue, there's also not a lot happening in it either, if that makes sense. Despite this, it's a better and more entertaining read than issue 3, so I can't complain much.

With all that said and done, I give this issue a rating of...

out of

As always, thanks to @blewitt and the rest of the weirdos working to get #comics on the Tags page here. If you do comment on this post, please drop the #comics tag into your comment somewhere. We need to get that count up and show our community is worthy of mention. #Comics for DAYS, y'all!

Make sure you come back next time as I wrap up the review of this mini-series, because I'll be hosting a special contest for my followers and readers of this series, and I wouldn't want you to be left out of the excitement!