TEAM 7 #8 (Final Issue)

Previously...

The last issue either jumped months of time in the series without explanation... or it jumped the logic train.  (I would say it "jumped the shark", but c'mon, that was in issue #1!)  Team 7 has assaulted the palace of Kaizen Gamorra, who is in possession of the dreaded Pandora's Box.  The team's resident Superman, Majestic, creates a massive tidal wave that is sweeping away the entire island.

Team 7 #8: "Mission 2.4: The Doom That Came to Kaizen" is the final issue of this unwanted, ill-conceived and worse-executed comic book series.  Like the previous issue, Tony Bedard wrote the script over Justin Jordan's plot.  Jesus Merino does the pencil and ink art all himself.  Gary Frank and Cam Smith slum for one more month to provide this issue's cover.

Team 7's founder and leader, John Lynch, narrates this issue in another one of his after action reports. This will be...confusing later on.

The wave of death crashes over the island, destroying the city and killing millions of people while Amanda Waller stares out the window in shock.

The Kaizen's palace is destabilized but not flooded.  Lynch orders Steve Trevor to get the chopper so they can exfiltrate before the building collapses on them.  Even though Trevor stayed on the drop ship when the rest of the team entered the palace last issue, he is here with them now.  I would try and explain this continuity gaffe, but I give slightly less a crap about this comic than the creators did.

Anyway, Lynch tells Slade Wilson and Cole Cash to get Trevor to the chopper while the rest of the team hangs back to fight the super-powered Kaizen.  Lynch then says, "Take Higgins with you."  Dean Higgins then appears in the next panel running beside the others.  That's all for Higgins in this issue.  He's presumed to have died but we never see him again and nobody mentions him.

When the Kaizen threatens to use the power of Pandora's Box, Kurt Lance encourages his wife, Dinah Drake-Lance to use her newfound sonic scream against Kaizen Gamorra.  Kurt apparently has the power to boost or amplify Dinah's powers.  If you were reading Birds of Prey, you kind of knew that already, but this is its first mention in Team 7.

Trevor, Slade, and Cash find a Gamorran helicopter to steal.  Then Majestic comes out of the water and starts attacking the Kaizen.  Majestic accuses Kaizen of killing his family, but I thought the Spartan cyborg did that before turning James Bronson into Majestic.  Wait, did Gamorra create the Spartan cyborg?  That sounds kind of familiar... But wait, Lynch says "we created Majestic".  Who is he talking about?  What the hell is happening?

Majestic picks up Pandora's Box, feeling the lure of its power.  Dinah has a dumb blonde moment where she actually needs Amanda Waller to explain why Majestic using Pandora's Box is a bad thing.  Then Kurt talks to Majestic while "leaching" some of his power.  So Kurt doesn't just affect Dinah, but he can boost or siphon anyone's powers?

Dinah - representing the "boob window" in Power Girl's absence.

Okay.  Dinah joins hands with Lynch, who has telekinetic powers, and Waller, who has... I don't know what powers she has, if any, and then Kurt, who boosts all of their powers.  The result is Dinah's Canary Cry turns into a white that swallows up the palace, the Kaizen, Majestic, and Kurt (maybe).  Dinah, Waller and Lynch are left wandering through the rubble, Dinah looking for her husband, Lynch looking for Pandora's Box.

Lynch grabs Pandora's Box, which immediately begins to corrupt him.  Amanda Waller beats him down and throws the box to Dinah, telling her to get on board the chopper with Slade, Cash, and Trevor.  Lynch starts to pull the chopper down with his telekinetic powers, so Amanda Waller shoots him in the head.

That ends Lynch's after action report.  Because he can't continue reporting if he's dead.

But wait!  First of all, it's an after action report.  He would need to have survived and gotten off the island in order to debrief the situation.  Second of all, he does survive somehow.  We know he's alive in the current time period, so this execution isn't shocking or dramatic, it's just confusing and unnecessary.  Why did his report end so abruptly?  Why was he narrating at all?

Anyway, the last page is narrated by Steve Trevor, who says Team 7 was shut down.  Based on the title of this issue, they were only on their second mission.  Some of the dialogue corroborates that number, but most of Lynch's narration over issues #7 and #8 contradicts it.  Trevor's report says that Waller is believed dead, even though we see her there at the end.

Why did they fly away and leave her there?  She was obviously still alive?  Why didn't they come back for her?  Why didn't Dinah try to find her husband some more?

The Characters

• Dinah Drake-Lance gets a lot of focus on her powers this issue.  She uses her Canary Cry once to knock down Kaizen Gamorra, and again the put down Majestic, with the unexpected effect of leveling an entire building.  Her powers are affected not only by her husband, but by all of the members of Team 7.

• Slade Wilson gets shot but otherwise doesn't do anything noteworthy.

• Amanda Waller might have a power but it's not clearly established or confirmed.  She has become a much more hard-edged character throughout this series, willing to kill to her boss to save the world.

• Cole Cash doesn't do anything noteworthy.

• Dean Higgins is believed dead but that's never shown.  Why did this character exist?

• Kurt Lance has the power to amplify the powers of others, but it works particularly well with his wife Dinah, because of their love and trust.  He disappears for some reason, believed dead.

• John Lynch uses his telekinetic powers a little.  He gets corrupted by Pandora's Box and then Waller shoots him in the head.  Sadly, that didn't kill him.

• James Bronson/Majestic, after murdering an entire nation, fights Gamorra and takes Pandora's Box.  Note: he has already destroyed an entire nation and killed all those people, the vast majority of them being innocent civilians, but the team is worried about what will happen when he gets possessed by the evil of Pandora's Box.  He disappears.

Impressions/Questions

Lynch is shot in the head by Waller at the end of this issue.  But back in issue #5, we saw that Lynch was very much alive in the present day DC Universe.  Slade went to kill him, but Lynch used his powers to defend himself.  Lynch was searching for Majestic in the ruins of Gamorra at the bottom of the ocean.  And we saw Majestic's hand coming out of the cracked ocean floor.

None of this is every addressed in this issue, and it left unresolved.

Kurt Lance disappeared when Dinah used her scream to create a white hole.  Then Amanda Waller was left stranded on a piece of rubble in the middle of the ocean.  But we know that Amanda Waller makes it back to the states, becomes a very powerful player in the military, and creates both the Suicide Squad and Justice League of America.  In Birds of Prey #0, we saw that as of four years after the end of Team 7, Waller has Kurt Lance preserved in stasis, so at some point she found his body.  Dinah probably could have found it, too, if she hadn't runaway so easily.

And back to Dinah and Birds of Prey.  The first two years of that series were bogged down by this underdeveloped mystery that Dinah killed her husband.  The awful, awful, dreadful writer who shall not be named created the impression that Dinah used her powers to kill her husband, that it was face-to-face and personal.  She was wracked with guilt and emotionally lost.  Here, Kurt's disappearance is almost incidental, and unexplained; she ought to be more curious and desperate than guilty.

Also, at the beginning of Birds of Prey, Black Canary is wanted for murder--the implication being that she's wanted for the murder of her husband, but that's a little vague because the writer did such a shitty job.  But here, Kurt's "death" is an accidental casualty of war.  That only one other living soul witnessed!  So if Dinah was wanted for murdering Kurt, the charge had to come from someone very high up in the military, someone who would have known better and not wanted to expose any information about Team 7.

I'm assuming Tony Bedard never read an issue of Team 7 or Birds of Prey before he wrote issue #7 and this one.  He may not have even read issue #7 before he wrote this one.  The questions and contradictions raised by the stupid and aborted series are too numerous and unfulfilling to spend any more time on.  I hate this.

Grade: F

TEAM 7 #7

Previously...

Team 7 went to the Advanced Prosthetic Research Center where Doctor Henshaw's pet project, Spartan turned everyone into robo-zombies.  Two members of the team were killed.  Henshaw was turned into a robo-zombie, as was his intern, Caitlin Fairchild, who also appeared to die, but will years later appear in Superboy, so I don't know what's up with that.  Also, team member James Bronson was transformed by Spartan into a superman-level metahuman called Majestic.

Team 7 #7: "Mission 2.2: Majestic" was plotted by series writer Justin Jordan, but scripted this time by Tony Bedard.  The first eight pages were drawn by Jesus Merino with the rest of the issue done by Pascal Alixe.  Ken Lashley drew the cover which sports a foldout in the style of all of DC's so-called WTF covers from the month of April 2013.  Here's what's stupid about the cover: the text on the front page reads "Pandora Against..." with the foldout page revealing "...The Rage of Majestic".  Aside from how misleading this tag is, they've completely screwed up the surprise element.  Any reader following the series ought to know that Majestic would be in this issue because that was the cliffhanger from last month.  The bigger shock is the fact that Pandora, whom we have never seen or heard anything about in this book, appears in this issue and is fighting Majestic.  See, whoever thought up this design for their WTF teaser... was stupid.

Let's proceed to find out what else is stupid about this comic.  C'mon, it'll be fun!

The issue opens up five years ago with Majestic invading the island nation of Gamorra, which we've been told is a bad place.  We've never really seen any evidence of that, but we keep being told that it's bad and that the leader of Gamorra is bad.  And they have Pandora's Box.  That's bad, I know, from Trinity War.  If you open Pandora's Box a bunch of dumb ideas come out that make me stop reading DC.

Way back in issue #0, we were told that James Bronson didn't have the meta-gene, but something else that made him special.  Well, whatever he had, the Spartan project activated it and turned him into a superhero.  And now he's a Superman-level military asset, flying around and blowing stuff up for Team 7.

According to John Lynch's narration, it's still five years before the current era in the comics, but obviously some time has passed, because Majestic has scared the crap out of America's enemies on a number of occasions.  Wait, though... According to the issue's title, this is still Team 7's second mission!  That doesn't make sense; their mission to the APRC shouldn't have even been the second mission, but speaking of that: what happened there?  What happened to Henshaw?  What happened to Caitlin Fairchild?  How did the team exfiltrate and stop all of the mindless robo-zombies that were killing their teammates?

Why does every book I review leave me pounding my head in frustration trying to figure out what's going on?

Anyway.

Team 7 follows Majestic to Gamorra because, whatever, they're invading an entire island.  Since the team's pilot died last issue, Lynch recruited Steve Trevor to fly them in their ridiculous looking ship.

While Gamorra's dictatorial ruler, Kaizen Gamorra, powers-up for battle with Majestic by siphoning off the powers or life-forces of some teenagers, Trevor pilots the team to the back of the royal palace or wherever.

First, Lynch says this was "the last time Team 7 operated as a unit", but again, according to the chapter title, this is only their second mission!

Second, Gamorra's army is called Basilisk, or made up of Basilisk soldiers, or Basilisk supplements Gamorra's army, or...something.  I remember that Basilisk is a terrorist organization like Cobra and Hydra, except with a different serpent name that wasn't already taken, but I don't remember if I knew that from this series or from Birds of Prey.  Nothing about either of these books leaves a lasting impression.

Third, Dinah is identified by her maiden surname "Drake", but last issue Cole Cash made an offhand remark that suggested she had already married Kurt Lance.  We know that she does take his name eventually, so is this an oversight on Lynch's part, or did Dinah not take his name yet, or are they not married yet, or did Tony Bedard not read/care about what happened in the last issue?  I kind of think all four possibilities are the right answer.

I've grown out of my adolescent craving for blood and gore in entertainment, but I confess to getting really excited when members of the team started getting shot.  I'm still crossing my fingers that everyone will die in the next two issues, even though I know that can't happen.

Of course, seeing her boyfriend/husband/man-toy wounded activates Dinah's super-human ability, her sonic scream, and in the next page we get an explanation that doesn't explain it.

So, according to Lynch, Dinah was born with the meta-gene, and the genetic technicians activated it during her medical checkups between missions.  But then, what was the trigger?  It seemed to come out of her because of stress or panic or some strong emotional reaction.  Why would the geneticists "switching her on" make something so random and uncontrollable the catalyst for something so deadly?  Also, why didn't Lynch tell her about it?  Why would he go into the field with a soldier who was capable of doing damage that hadn't been field tested or studied yet?  What a horrible goddamn operation he's running!  Lynch is a moron, and I hope he dies, even though I know he doesn't.

So then the team finds a group of precognitive children who show everyone a vision of the future that includes Majestic fighting Pandora, Slade Wilson looking like Deathstroke, Dinah looking like Black Canary, and Cole looking like, well, he always looks like Grifter, but yeah.  Lynch makes it sound pretty bad but I don't really get it from the art.

This is what will happen if Kaizen Gamorra opens up Pandora's Box.  Majestic don't like that none too much.

He flies up into space and then comes back down rocketing at super speed, crashing into the ocean next to Gamorra, creating a huge tidal wave that threatens to wipe out the entire island and everyone there, including Team 7.

The last page says, "To Be Concluded".  Somehow I doubt many of my issues will be resolved.

The Characters

• Dinah Drake (or Lance?) has activated her superpower.  She was born with the meta-gene, so there wasn't some special thing that gave her the "Canary Cry", unless you count unseen, unknown scientists performing unseen, unknown procedures to activate the power... even though it seems like it was turned on because of her emotional state.

• Slade Wilson doesn't do anything noteworthy.

• Amanda Waller doesn't do anything noteworthy.

• Cole Cash gets shot but otherwise doesn't do anything noteworthy.

• Dean Higgins gets shot but otherwise doesn't do anything noteworthy.

• Kurt Lance gets shot but otherwise doesn't do anything noteworthy.

• John Lynch narrates the story and takes part in his first field operation that we've seen.  Still doesn't feel very noteworthy.

• James Bronson/Majestic flies around destroying stuff that we never really see or care about until the end when he creates a deadly tsunami.  For a character this powerful, who was just activated in last issue's cliffhanger in such a traumatic fashion, I would be curious to know more about how he thinks and feels, but we never get any insight into his state.  He doesn't even speak in this issue.  He certainly doesn't display any "rage" as the cover text would suggest.

Impressions/Questions

The first thing I noticed was that Tony Bedard wrote this issue over Justin Jordan's plot.  I haven't been very enthusiastic about Jordan's writing up to this point, so I was hoping for a stronger finish from Bedard.  Unfortunately, I had a whole new group of problems.  Clearly, this story had to rush to the finish because of its pending cancelation, but it does feel like we just skipped over two or three issues to get to this point.  It also feels like Bedard was brought in tell a particular story that the editors wanted told that hadn't been adequately set up by the previous seven issues.  There are a lot of splash pages and a lot of time spent with Kaizen Gamorra and the pre-cogs and Majestic and Steve Trevor, all characters that we've never spent any time with before, and the result is that we don't get much from the actual Team 7.  Is that because Bedard didn't feel comfortable with the characters, or he didn't care?

Issue #5 was framed by a meeting between present day Lynch and Slade.  We still haven't gone back to that situation.

This is the issue where Dinah finally experiences her sonic scream for the first time... but of course that doesn't make the big game-changing foldout cover image.

This book is dead and it knows it.

Grade: D

TEAM 7 #6

Previously...

In the present day, Deathstroke hunts down his former boss, John Lynch.  Five years earlier, Alex Fairchild's daughter Caitlin is interning at the Advanced Prosthetic Research Center under the direction of Dr. Henshaw.  Project: Spartan goes haywire and lots of little cyborg monsters start killing people at the lab and hunting Caitlin.

Team 7 #6: "Mission 2.2: Birth of a Superman" is written by Justin Jordan with art by... hoo-boy, Pascal Alixe (pages 1-5), Cliff Richards (pages 6-15), and Gui Balbi and Juan Castro (pages 16-20).  Once again, Gary Frank and Cam Smith provided a cover for a book that is well below their talent level.  By the time Jordan was scripting this issue he had to have known the series was cancelled, so the text on the cover confirms that this final arc is just cleaning house.

The issue opens up with most of Team 7 racing toward the Advanced Prosthetics Research Center in their ridiculous looking ship piloted by Summer Ramos, who we haven't really seen much in this series.  Ramos tells the team they're nearing the APRC, and that no distress calls are emanating from the facility.  Strange... How did Team 7 know there was a problem?

Alex Fairchild is understandably distressed because his daughter is down at the facility, but he doesn't know what kind of situation they're walking into.  Again: how did Team 7 know there was a problem and yet not know anything about the problem?

There's a bit of banter from Cole Cash and Amanda Waller revealing that James Bronson did not come on this mission, but rather went to visit his family.  Cash also mentions rather flippantly that the Lances didn't even get a honeymoon.  Really, Dinah Drake and Kurt Lance got married between issues?  We didn't see or hear anything about it before this mention?

As the stupid drop ship approaches the APRC, uh... $#@% goes down.

Ramos, we hardly knew ye.

As the ship comes under attack from little robot drone monsters, the Team fight back while Ramos pilots the ship to a safe landing before she dies.

Ramos' death might have felt meaningful if we knew here, or even entertaining if it wasn't such a blatant ripoff of this other scene.  (Man, Justin Jordan rips off a lot of movie material for this book.)

After the crash, Slade Wilson takes charge and leads the team through a crowd of cyborg zombie monsters that don't present much of a threat.  Once inside, they find a whole bunch of corpses messed up by the cyborg monsters unleashed by Project: Spartan.  From the carnage, Caitlin Fairchild emerges to the joy of her father.

Uh oh, that ain't a good look...

Slade chases the cyborg monster Caitlin and executes her/it for killing his best friend.  Dinah thinks these cyborgs are too easy to kill and that it must be part of a setup.  Her fears are confirmed when what's left of Hank Henshaw shows up.

Henshaw reveals that this whole chaotic mess was just to lure Team 7 to the Spartan robot or program (again, we don't know how they found out so we don't know how it lured them).  Also, the Spartan robot or program was created by Gamorra, a rogue nation or the name of its leader... maybe.  Also, Gamorra and Spartan wanted Team 7 member James Bronson specifically for reasons unknown.

Cut to James Bronson having dinner with his family at someone's apartment.  His mom is attacked in the kitchen by Spartan, who then... does something... transfers its core programming into Bronson, I suppose.

This causes an explosion.

The final page shows somebody who looks like the WildStorm character Mr. Majestic flying out of the wreckage.  I guess we're to assume that Bronson combined with Spartan creates Majestic.

Last issue involved a frame device with present day Slade/Deathstroke and John Lynch.  That sequence doesn't appear in this issue.

The Characters

• Dinah Drake is apparently Dinah Lance now.  She doesn't do anything noteworthy.

• Slade Wilson is sad that his friend dies and murders the friend's daughter, but she was a cyborg zombie so it's probably okay.

• Amanda Waller has a line about never losing an operative in the field.  Throughout this series she has had the most consistently ironic dialogue, which is only interesting if you know they're ironic because you know the character in other comics.

• Cole Cash doesn't do anything noteworthy.

• Dean Higgins doesn't do anything noteworthy.

• James Bronson becomes Mr. Majestic.

• Kurt Lance doesn't appear in this issue.  I guess married life is too smothering for him, or more likely he was separated from the team since marriage violates all sorts of laws and regulations of the military code.

• John Lynch doesn't appear in this issue.

• Alex Fairchild dies in this issue.

• Summer Ramos dies in this issue.

Impressions/Questions

Given the gleeful death and destruction and the cyborg zombies, this book should have at least felt fun, but it was pretty boring.  Last week I said the new threat of Spartan and the robot monsters was a lot more interesting than the Eclipso zombies from the first arc.  Yeah, I called that one too early because this is just more of the same.  Despite the body count, these things aren't interesting or dangerous; they're just so much cannon fodder.

Also, there are two pages devoted to a building exploding.  Nothing really interesting about this double-page splash, just a building getting blown up--a building full of people we don't know or care much about.  Two pages is a lot of real-estate in a twenty page comic.  Ten percent of the story is just a big anticlimactic boom.

The series is winding down, so you can tell that Justin Jordan is rushing to tie up... just ends.  The deaths feel arbitrary and hollow.  I'm expecting Higgins to die next issue, and maybe we'll see how some of the survivors, like Dinah, got their superpowers.

Grade: C-

TEAM 7 #5

Previously...

Five years before the current DC Universe time period, the enigmatic John Lynch assembled a team of soldiers, mercenaries, and people with all-around extraordinary physical abilities to combat or contain the growing threat of metahumans.  During its first mission, Team 7 stopped the mystical entity known as Eclipso from wreaking havoc and generally doing villain stuff.  In the course of events, Slade Wilson was nearly killed and Dinah Drake has come to question the team's objective.

Team 7 #5: "Mission 2.1: The Spartan Way" is written by Justin Jordan, with art in the present-day sequences provided by Jesus Merino and Nei Ruffino, and the flashback sequences by Pascal Alixe and Nathan Erying.  Gary Frank drew the cover with Cam Smith inking.

The issue begins in present day Deathstroke, aka Slade Wilson, boarding something that looks vaguely like a gigantic, possibly military-grade airboat.  (Man, there is nothing like a good helicarrier!)  Deathstroke shoots his way into the office of his former boss, John Lynch, who doesn't look terribly concerned for his safety or remorseful for the men Slade just murdered to get to him.

We then cut to five years ago, where Caitlin Fairchild, the teenage daughter of Slade's teammate, Alex Fairchild, is working at The Advanced Prosthetic Research Center.  I loved Caitlin Fairchild as the leader of Wildstorm's Gen13 when that book first came out twenty years ago.  What the New 52 has done to her in this series and in Superboy is, well, as disappointing as all of the other character evolutions.

Caitlin, a precocious little scientist is upgrading the cybernetic arm of Maxine Manchester, who in a different universe, was the cyborg member of WildC.A.T.s known as Ladytron.  There is a nod to her previous history with Caitlin listening to a BritPop band called Ladytron during their conversation.  Of course, I didn't pick up on that reference when I first read it; I figured this girl was someone we knew because she looked familiar but I've never read those issues of WildC.A.T.s.  Thanks to ComicVine for identifying the lady in this scene.

Then Caitlin is met by the head of the research center, Doctor Henshaw.  Ah, now this bozo I know.  Henshaw is very kind and considerate toward Caitlin, almost suspiciously so much that I expected him to make a pass at her, but that doesn't happen.

Henshaw gives Caitlin some rudimentary task, and then he goes into another lab to oversee Project: Spartan.  There is a humanoid man on a lab table with cybernetic parts under the skin.  The doctors' dialogue makes it clear that "Spartan" is not their creation, they just found him after he was hurt/damaged.  Not sure how much or if any of the original Spartan from WildC.A.T.s will be represented by this character.

Then we cut to... wherever it is Team 7 hangs out or recuperates.  Slade is aggressively exercising, despite his recent trauma.  Alex Fairchild, who stabbed him last issue, by the way, comes to have a chat.  Alex tells Slade the reason he works for Lynch is to give his daughter a better future.  He wants to know why Slade joined the team.

In a different part of Team 7's base--or, more specifically, "elsewhere"--Dinah Drake pays Lynch a visit.  She ain't too happy with the way things are going for the team, and accuses Lynch of trying to destroy the team he hand picked.

That dialogue isn't as cute as the writer wants it to sound, but anyway...

Holy &@#$ing God!!!

Huh... So Lynch is trying to give the team superpowers... Okay...

Back at the Advanced Cybernetics Research Center, Caitlin is attacked by a white lab rabbit that has been fused nightmarishly with cybernetic parts.  She crushes it with a clipboard, then backtracks the rabbit's path to the Project: Spartan lab, where she finds Maxine and the rest of the doctors in--to put it mildly--a bit of a pickle.

Back in the present aboard Lynch's party yacht, Slade opens fire trying to kill him, but Lynch goes all Darth Vader on Cloud City stopping the bullets and pulling the gun right out of Slade's hand.

The last page cryptically shows a destroyed city and a hand popping up out of the ground.  Someone they thought they killed didn't die.

The Characters

Slade asks Lynch if there is anyone left from the Team who doesn't have powers?  Good question...

• Dinah Drake at some point gets her sonic scream, the Canary Cry, so we know she gets a superpower at some point.

• Slade Wilson becomes a super soldier with advanced strength, speed, healing, endurance, mental processing and such.

• Cole Cash gets some kind of special power by the time he becomes Grifter, though I don't remember what that is.  He does not appear in this issue.

• John Lynch apparently has some kind of magnetic or telekinetic power.  Not sure where that came from.

• Amanda Waller has never displayed any kind of power that I'm aware of, other than shedding a hundred and fifty pounds for the New 52, but I don't read Suicide Squad so maybe she has a power in that series.  She does not appear in this issue.

• Kurt Lance supposedly died, but we now know that's not the case.  There have been some hints and indications in Birds of Prey that he might have amplified or activated Dinah's sonic abilities.  He does not appear in this issue.

• Alex Fairchild hasn't been shown in the present day to my knowledge.

• Dean Higgins hasn't been shown in the present day to my knowledge.  He does not appear in this issue.

• James Bronson hasn't been shown in the present day to my knowledge.  He does not appear in this issue.

• Summer Ramos hasn't been shown in the present day to my knowledge.  She does not appear in this issue.

Impressions/Questions

Only half of the team appears in this issue, and if we're counting Lynch and Ramos, only 40% of the main cast appears in this issue.  It really feels more like Caitlin Fairchild's story as she is first exposed to the horrible fallout of Henshaw's Project: Spartan.

This issue didn't feel like the first part of a new mission.  It felt like a prologue--more of a transitional issue.  But it was also probably the best of the series so far.  All of the flashback scenes worked; it was the frame story with Deathstroke that I didn't care about.  Jordan gives the characters some much-needed quiet time to actually develop characterization.  We know more about Dinah, Lynch, Slade and Alex from this issue than we have learned in the previous five.  And the horrors coming out of the cybernetics lab are vastly more interesting and threatening than the Eclipso zombies the team first fought aboard the prison (which, again, was called "The Float").

At this point, there are only three more issues left of this series.  I don't think I will miss it, but I am kind of excited for the first time to read them because this setup was pretty good.

Grade: B+

TEAM 7 #4

Previously...

Team 7 traveled to Sentinel Island where some evil mercenaries slaughtered a village of men, women, and children in order to find a secret location that housed a diamond or something that was like a prison for the spirit of Eclipso.  During the fracas, Eclipso is set free and takes possession of Slade Wilson.

Team 7 #4: "Black Diamond Probability: Mission 1.4: The Possession of Slade Wilson" is written by Justin Jordan with pencil and ink art by Jesus Merino, colors by Nathan Eyring, and a cover by Tyler Kirkham.  Once more, the title is needlessly long and unnecessarily, confusingly mislabeled.  It should be "Mission 1: Black Diamond Probability Part 4: The Possession of Slade Wilson" but even that is way too long.

So, yeah, Slade Wilson has been taken over by Eclipso.  He kills the mercenary working for Basilisk and then after blustering to Amanda Waller and Slade's BFF, Alex Fairchild, the team opens fire on their possessed buddy.

Eclipslade is too powerful for the team, though, but thankfully that Essence chick from last issue shows up to save them.  She's a... a ghost, or a witch, or something.  She gives the team time to fall back, but Eclipslade pulls a black, mystical sword out of her.

Cole Cash sticks around, though, and gets the villain "dialoguing" long enough to accidentally step on a land mine.  Cash uses that distraction to pick up the black diamond stone that might control or contain Eclipslade.

Cash and Essence return to the ravaged village where Essence tells the team how Eclipslade can be contained if Waller doesn't order them to retreat like cowards.  Dinah Drake uses this moment to bring up the dead kids that Essence maybe could have/should have saved from the Basilisk mercenaries, because you know, what else do they have to do right now?

Then Eclipslade comes back and they all fight.  Fairchild stabs him and the spirit of Eclipso abandons his human host and then Cash uses the black diamond to trap the spirit in a slightly bigger black diamond.

Slade survives and Waller orders the team's evacuation.  The issue ends with John Lynch visiting Slade in recovery and mentioning Project: Majestic.  And that's the end of the first mission.  Half way to the series' cancelation.

The Characters

• Dinah Drake is still focused on the dead kids.  It's nice to see her compassion and care, but at this point it makes her seem less cognizant of the current threat and more whiny and girlish.
• Kurt Lance doesn't do anything noteworthy.
• Slade Wilson is possessed by Eclipso for 90% of the story.
• Alex Fairchild is still Slade's buddy, but that doesn't stop him from shooting and stabbing him.
• Cole Cash is kind of the star of this issue but his actions and dialogue are still pretty generic.
• James Bronson doesn't do anything noteworthy.
• Amanda Waller takes charge with Slade being compromised.  Her most interesting line comes at the end of the mission when she says, "I'm not leaving anyone behind. Ever."  Of course, if you know anything about the character, you know how true that statement turns out to be.
• Dean Higgins doesn't do anything noteworthy.
• John Lynch is shown for the first time since issue #1, teasing the next story arc.
• Summer Ramos does not appear, but is mentioned as going to pick the team up from the island.

Impressions/Questions

This issue reads very, very, very fast.  Like, it took me two minutes to read, and I'm a pretty slow reader.  Seven out of the twenty pages comprise three or fewer panels.  Dialogue is sparse and mostly meaningless.  There wasn't enough time to find anything objectionable, or likable.  I got to the end and thought, Okay, that happened.

Grade: C-

TEAM 7 #3

Previously...

Team 7 is an elite special forces unit designed to combat metahuman threats.  In their first mission, they broke into a floating prison complex which had been taken over by a dark entity known as Eclipso... sort of.  We actually didn't see the real Eclipso, just his presence taken over inmates and doctors.

Team 7 #3: "Black Diamond Probability: Mission 1.3: Darkness Rising" was written by Justin Jordan, with art by Julius Gopez and Jimbo Salgado.  Colors are by Nathan Eyring.  The cover was done by Tyler Kirkham and Batt, and boasts the guest appearance of Essence from the pages of Red Hood and the Outlaws.  Since I don't read that book, this appearance means nothing to me yet.

So... this issue is still part of "Black Diamond Probability" which, I guess, is the first story arc featuring the threat of Eclipso.  And this is still part of the first mission, even though this seems like a completely different thing.

This issue is narrated by Slade Wilson, the man we know as Deathstroke, as part of his "war journal".  What, you thought The Punisher had a monopoly on that phrase?  He explains that Team 7 is making their difficult way to the mysterious Sentinel Island.  He explains that because of the strange electromagnetic effect of the island, the team must approach "low tech" via raft and climbing ropes instead of more traditional sci-fi stuff.  Slade doesn't explain, however, why they need to go to the island or what the mission is.

They arrive at a village only to discover that mercenaries have attacked and slaughtered the villagers.

Dinah Drake and her boyfriend Kurt Lance investigate one of the village huts, finding children murdered.

The team finds one lone survivor, who they don't understand because no one speaks the language, except for the writer or editor who translates the dying man's speak.  Oh, and Essence understands them, too.  She translates for Slade, who is the only member of the team able to see her.

I don't know who Essence is or what she does, other than she seems vaguely ghost-ish.  Slade sees her and starts shooting.  What's interesting is that the rest of his team don't see her, but start shooting because, hey, they have guns; why not use 'em?

Slade actually does the most level-headed and rational thing I've ever seen a character in comics do: he refuses to play by supernatural rules.  He flat out tells Essence if she doesn't reveal herself to his teammates, he'll walk away and ignore any warnings or pleas she tries.  So Essence shows herself to the rest of Team 7.  Slade's play is so clever that I think writer Justin Jordan probably thought of it first and then manufactured a situation where the others couldn't see Essence.  That's how it must have happened because nothing else makes sense.  There is no reason why she didn't show herself to all of them from the beginning.

There's also no reason why the old dying man's dialogue needed to be translated for we readers if Essence was going to do it on the next page.  It's redundant and bad writing/editing.

We cutaway from Team 7 and Essence to the surviving band of mercenaries who attacked the island.  The leader is forcing a man and his daughter to march through the jungle when ghost-like spirits attack the mercs, butchering them pretty easily.  The mercenary leader takes an amulet from the little girl and uses it to barter safe passage through the wilderness while the spirits carry the little girl away.

Since Slade's narration never explained what the mission was or what they're here to accomplish, I have no idea who the mercenaries are, who the villagers are, who the ghosts are, or what any of these people want to accomplish.  What's more, I don't think the characters do?  The merc leader seems surprised at what's happening, and takes the girl's amulet for protection as a desperate audible play.  If he didn't know what it would/could do, why did he have the old man and the girl in the first place?

Also, I don't know if I've mentioned it before, but Team 7's costumes are overly complicated and stupid-looking, but if that's how you're going to have your heroes dress, than the villains shouldn't wear costumes that look the exact same.  I swear, the first page of the mercenaries I thought I was reading Team 7 characters getting killed.

The unsuitability of their costumes is perfectly illustrated in the dialogue between Cole Cash and  James Bronson.

Cash comes up with an eye-rollingly forced explanation for why he wears a mask.  And when pressed why he chose a red mask, he simply chocks it up to "style".  The thing is--Bronson, who asks why Cash wears a red mask--is wearing a red combat suit.  The team's uniforms look more like superhero costumes than military fatigues, so this kind of dialogue either suggests a disconnect between the script and the art team, or a lack of understanding how visual irony works.

Essence explains to Team 7 what the art already showed us, and tells us a little of the What of Sentinel Island.  It's a prison housing some dark force, and the ghost spirits are protectors/jailers.  Still don't know why anybody is here or why they don't know why they're here.

Then we cut to Kaizen Gamorra, a bad guy, I believe, who is using naked telepaths in a bubble bath to spy on the events of the island.

After this, we arrive at the Heart of Hell, a part of the island in what looks like an open volcano crater.  Slade, Cash, Alex Fairchild, and maybe the rest of the team, though we don't see them, rush the mercenary defenders.  Slade is blown up, but he gets better enough to slice open the merc leader, who also gets better enough to reach for the glowing rock that seems to be important all of a sudden.

Then this happens:

The Characters

If you're a fan of any of the characters other than Slade, this issue wasn't really for you.

• Dinah Drake finds the hut full of dead kids, and later she is still shaken up by it.  I guess this shows that she's sensitive and compassionate.  Good to know.
• Kurt Lance doesn't do anything really noteworthy.
• Slade Wilson is stubborn and rational.  He narrates the issue, though like issue #2, there's no strong reason for this story to be told through his eyes.  It could have been Lynch's after-action report or briefing, but whatever.  Slade, it appears, is now possessed by Eclipso.
• Alex Fairchild doesn't do anything really noteworthy.
• Cole Cash has some kind of funny dialogue.
• James Bronson doesn't do anything really noteworthy.
• Amanda Waller doesn't do anything really noteworthy.
• Dean Higgins doesn't do anything really noteworthy.
• John Lynch and Summer Ramos do not appear in this issue.

Impressions/Questions

The story depends on the reader just dismissing the lack of exposition and just rolling with the events happening.  If you ask any questions, however, your enjoyment of the story just plummets.

I like Gopez's art better than Ron Frenz and Jesus Merino on the previous issues, but only a little bit.  There is a strong lack of background details, and the last couple pages give you no sense of setting.

My initial fear that the cast was too large and unwieldy and underdeveloped to receive adequate attention every issue has proven true for two issues in a row now.  This issue only has enough time and space for three characters; the rest are given courtesy lines and maybe a background panel or two.

Grade: D+