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Post by rberman on Aug 14, 2018 7:04:19 GMT -5
#24 (November 1988) “Goodbye, Blue Sky”
The Story: VAX 117, a fish-headed alien in a distant part of our galaxy, receives the tachyon distress call from the beacon activated by Dr. Tuolema in issue #20. VAX teleports to Earth to check it out. He finds dozens of warships encircling Earth, enters one, kills its Horde pilot, and absorbs his memories to get apprised of the situation between Horde and the Earth.   In New Haven, a giant monster appears from nowhere to menace Dr. Tuolema, but then VAX appears also from nowhere to kill the monster. VAX also kills a Paideia lab guy to harvest a genetic sample, then teleports away. VAX intends to analyze human and Horde DNA and report back to his bosses whether the “situation is satisfactory,” which sounds ominous. And yep, a giant organic-looking alien vessel warps into Earth orbit at the conclusion of the issue.   Paedia officials are putting together a new team to be the seventh (**see footnote) generation of Morituri warriors, but they’re choosing a nasty trio this time around for a Black Ops squad. These three are no idealists serving for God and country; they will expect to be paid, and also to survive. The bureaucrats claim that Dr. Tuolema has discovered a cure for the Morituri death effect, but I’ll believe it when I see it, or at least hear it from Dr. Tuolema directly. The three ruffians being recruited are: • Julio “Red Cougar” Gonzalez is a serial killer who fancies himself a political prisoner. He beats up a prison roommate who calls him a “taco chomper.”  • In Pakistan, Zakir Shastri leads a Paideia taskforce assaulting bandit camps. Well, bandit villages really, where Shastri kills the women and children. He’s lightly dressed but wears a force field of “phase armor” for protection.  • The Cambodian assassin Tam Van Ok slices and dices a meeting-full of Triad bosses in an underground lair, but he’s no crusader, just an employee of a rival mobster.  Scatterbrain, still his coma, dies, but not before he reaches out telepathically to Scanner, warning him that the Paideia government is about to collapse, and that Shear is dangerous company.  My Two Cents: The art team is a novel recombination, Calimee (from #22) inked by Mayerik. (from #23). We've talked a little in this thread about the politics of the author. One way to analyze a comic book is to ask whether its outlook is essentially conservative or liberal with respect to the status quo. In this sense, a “conservative” comic book defends an imperfect status quo against external threats, whereas a “liberal” one sees the status quo as fatally flawed and in need of replacement. Gillis’ approach to Strikeforce: Morituri set up a united human race fighting off alien threats. But Hudnall immediately started showing us corrupt factions pulling the strings of the Paideia, and now recruiting vicious criminals as their heroes. So he’s not only showing us that the Paideia needs to go, but also telling us (through Scatterbrain) that it’s primed to happen. I’m reminded of Orson Scott Card’s novel “Ender’s Game,” in which the defeat of Earth’s alien enemies was also the occasion for a revolution back home. J. Michael Straczynski includes a similar “dangers foreign and domestic” element in his sci-fi television epic Babylon 5. So by this metric, Hudnall is the liberal, and Gillis the conservative. Gillis set up the arrival of some new alien species back in issue #20 when Dr. Tuolema activated an interstellar beacon, not knowing whom it would summon. VAX 117 and his folks seem far more powerful than either humans or Horde. Will this result in an alliance of strange bedfellows against this new threat? Space Oddity: VAX 117 speaks of Earth as being located in the “Western Arm” of the Milky Way Galaxy. This compass direction makes no sense for a spinning galaxy. Here on Earth, we name the four arms of our galaxy in relation to constellations: Norma-Cygnus, Sagittarius, Scutum-Crux, and Perseus. Earth is located in the “Orion Spur” rather than any of those four arms. I wouldn’t expect an alien to designate galactic locations based on Earth constellation names, but the use of “Western” makes even less sense, if that’s possible. How many issues until the Black Ops Morituri have to fight the regular team? I predict three. I find it questionable for Hudnall to perpetuate stereotypes by casting ethnic minorities in all three slots of the evil Black Ops team. The Morituri team was already white enough as it is. Shear is Turkish, and Brava is Spanish, but they are colored as white. This sort of thing was quite common in comic books in the 80s, and it's still pretty common today I suspect. ** By my count the generations of Morituri are: 1) The Black Watch 2) Vyking, Blackthorn, Marathon, Radian, Snapdragon, and Adept 3) Scatterbrain, Scaredycat, and Toxyn 4) Shear, Hardcase, Brava, Backhand, Silencer, Wildcard 5) The monster Morituri 6) Scanner and Jason Edwards (who still has no code name) 7) These new black ops guys
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Post by rberman on Aug 15, 2018 7:42:00 GMT -5
#25 (December 1988) “Living in the Shadow”
The Story: The three Black Ops recruits arrive at the base to undergo their Morituri transformation, but Dr. Tuolema balks at working on anyone who didn’t come through regular channels. He still gives no hint that he’s cured the Morituri death effect either. But he does have two new recruits to introduce to the squad.  While everybody’s greeting the two new ladies, Shear has a psychotic break. Convinced that everyone is trying to kill him, he murders Commander Pogorelich. A big fight breaks out, the outcome of which is that everybody really is trying to kill Shear, and eventually that’s what happens.   But a bunch of Paideia soldiers died in the process, and the media catch a wind of it. The cover story is “Shear went crazy from a brain tumor brought on by trauma sustained in the battle at the TV station.” That’s ridiculous; trauma doesn’t cause cancer. But maybe the public are dumber in the future? And Shear had been complaining of headaches, so maybe at least the tumor part is true.  Following the death of Pogorelich, the shadows bosses of the Paideia choose one of their own suits to run the Morituri, which are a military program. Is that a thing?  Out in Earth orbit, the giant alien ship (1/4 the size of the moon, we are told) just sits there. The Horde stare at it for a while, fail to make contact, and then gear up to attack it. Yeah, that’s going to go really well. How about you sent a probe or a landing crew first? That's what Captain Picard would do. My Two Cents: Not much to say about this issue, which is mainly a big intra-mural fight. With the deaths of two previous characters and the introduction of two new ones, the balances is shifting from Peter Gillis creations to James Hudnall creations. Calimee and Zuniga are teamed again for art, as on issue #22. Jason Edwards has a code-name now: Revenge. Now we know!
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Post by rberman on Aug 16, 2018 7:06:58 GMT -5
#26 (January 1989) “The Last Morituri”
The Story: We don’t see the Horde assault on the alien dreadnought, but it goes as poorly as you might have expected. The Paideia seize that opportunity to launch an all-out assault on the Horde HQ in Capetown, South Africa. The Horde begin a rapid evacuation from Capetown back to orbit, but a few remain behind to harass the Morituri advance. Taking control of the Horde base, the Morituri discover a group of Mellidar, the cat-creatures that were neither slave nor accomplice to the Horde. The failure of the Mellidar to enter the plot is one of the biggest missed opportunities of the transition from Gillis to Hudnall as the Morituri plotter. They were the subject of a whole issue earlier; they should have mattered somehow in the end. But nope, they’re never heard from again; they’re just out there roaming the Eearth somewhere I guess.  The Paideia receive a global broadcast from the new aliens, “the people of VXX 199,” who announce that they have defeated the Horde and wish humanity well. Something tells me they don’t really look like the smiling human depicted in this video.  The remaining Horde ships flee Earth orbit, regrouping around Mars. Is this easy victory at the hand of alien benefactors too good to be true? Maybe so; the alien ship moves off at first, but then we see it lurking behind the moon.   We overhear the truth about the cure; It hasn’t been tested on live subjects yet. The black ops trio will be the first ones to receive it.  My Two Cents: The issue title refers to Brava, the only Morituri surviving from generation five or earlier. The four newer recruits (Revenge, Scanner, Lifter, and Burn) are getting their first battle experience in what proves to be a mop-up action. Brava doesn’t expect to survive the battle, but despite disappearing under a pile of enemy bodies at one point, she makes it through alive.  There’s a Hordian named “Fire Slasher,” which is a throwback to Gillis’ naming patterns rather than Hudnall’s. And he’s also a green Hordian, which is new. Or maybe he just looks green on the monitor screen?  Capetown has a broken statue honoring anti-Apartheid martyr Stephen Biko, immortalized already in the song “Biko” by Peter Gabriel Kimmo Tuolema’s first name is spelled “Kimo” in this issue and some futures ones too. Is it really the end of the Horde? If so, it’s a bit of an anticlimax; we didn’t even see the pivotal battle in which they got creamed. But perhaps this isn’t so much a story about the war as it is about what the war does to the homefront, symbolized by the pyrrhic nature of every Morituri victory. That would have been very much on the minds of middle aged adults in the 1980s, having lived through Vietnam and seen the fates of returning soldiers. Hundall is giving the black ops trio a nice slow spin-up; we’re three issues into their story, and they are just about to get Morituri’ed in time for the apparent end of the war. The art combo this time is Bagley and Mayerik, who stabilize at the team for the rest of the run.
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Post by rberman on Aug 17, 2018 3:26:38 GMT -5
#27 (February 1989) “Tuolema’s Story”
The Story: It is a dark and stormy night. Dr. Tuolema shows up at Guy Harding’s house in California to tell his life story. His experiments on prolonging human life were interrupted by the Horde incursion, and a coalition of government and industrial tycoons prevailed upon him to use his treatment on soldiers without being perfected for safety. Of the original five Black Watch members who were treated, two did not survive their activation ordeal in The Garden (see issue #2 to remember that that’s like), which is why we only met three of them in previous flashbacks.  Tuolema has also performed the Morituri procedure on the three black ops guys, who are now known as The Tiger, The Wind, and The Ghost respectively. None of the previous Morituri got a “The” with their name. What a rip-off! Tuolema spies on his boss and learns of a plan to use the black ops trio to assassinate the Prime Minister of the Paideia as part of a general coup. As Tuolema chats with Guy Harding about his life, the new Morituri assassin Tam Van Ok “The Ghost” sneaks into the room, intent on shish-kebabing Tuolema on a katana. But The Ghost thinks twice after hearing Tuolema’s tale about the duplicitous people running Morituri. He radios in that he couldn’t find Tuolema, and he receives new orders to help wipe out the Morituri.  My Two Cents: It’s a spotlight issue: No Morituri (except three new Black Ops guys), no Horde, no VXX aliens. Just a long expository conversation, laden with flashbacks, which is part “The story thus far” but also moves things along. Tuolema’s daughter reads a video comic about the adventures of Spider-Man’s son, and Hudnall confesses that The Garden is his version of the X-Men's "Danger Room." Hudnall has picked up the intertextuality ball from Gillis finally, showing us how Spider-Man and X-Men comics could inspire a scientist to perform his career-defining work. This serves as an implicit argument that Strikeforce: Morituri itself can rise above mere entertainment to inspire and shape minds.   The contours of the conspiracy are clear now, and it appears that The Ghost is more of a free thinker than his bosses gave him credit for. He doesn’t need their help to receive the “Morituri cure.” He’s already received it, courtesy of a “benign virus” that Revenge picked up when he was a Horde slave. This makes a sort of sense; we know the Horde had found some way to keep Black Watch member Bruce alive long after he should have exploded. If that involved an airborne virus, then Revenge would have picked it up unknowingly just living on that same ship. But then again, Radian was also exposed to Bruce. Did he get the virus? Did he bring it back to Earth and pass it to anybody before Shear murdered him? Maybe there wasn’t enough time of exposure for such things. At any rate, by now Revenge has surely passed the virus around to all the Morituri, though we don’t know if it will actually protect them from dying. The notion of an actual cure undermines the central conceit behind the Morituri, and indeed under Hudnall’s pen, not a single Morituri will die from their own powers; they all die fighting. It’s death all the same, but without the ticking time bomb of inevitability and desperation that Gillis built into the series. At one point Tuolema confesses his infatuation with Beth Luis Nion, now-deceased Morituri commander. We previously saw that she was in a relationship with one of the Black Guard, so apparently his attachment to her was one-sided.  Guy Harding is reading “A Farewell to Arms,” Ernest Hemingway’s fictionalized account of his service in World War I. This is the first literary reference we’ve seen since Hudnall took over the writing in issue #21.
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Post by rberman on Aug 18, 2018 7:18:25 GMT -5
#28 (March 1989) “The Ghost, the Tiger, and the Wind”
Cover Corner Box features: Revenge
The Story: In Barcelona, The Tiger murders Brava and her elderly dad. In Atlanta, where the Morituri’s base-on-a-train is making a victory tour of North America, The Wind beats up Revenge but is ultimately defeated. The Ghost murders the two train drivers and sets the Morituri train on a course for a bomb-laden bridge further down the track. But, quite reasonably actually, he decides that Morituri are really tough and might survive a bomb and train wreck, so he had better stab them to bits with his sword first also. That plan fails thanks to Scanner’s super-senses, and The Ghost finds himself thrown off the train by Lifter. Revenge tries to stop the train from reaching the booby trapped bridge, but he arrives just in time to get caught in the explosion, and the train hurtles off the trestle down into a deep ravine. Cliffhanger!  My Two Cents: This was a good issue; Hudnall is winning me over with his Paideia-based intrigue plot. I had thought last issue that The Ghost was going to betray his masters and save the Morituri from The Wind and The Tiger. Nope, apparently not, at least not yet, but he’s clearly thinking about some sort of mutiny. Junzo Tanaka the tycoon made his billions by selling Morituri merchandise. Now he wants to turn around and knock off the man in charge. Is it silly to read this as some commentary about editorial strife in the Marvel Bullpen? This story was written in the years when various corporate raiders were vying over Marvel Comics like cats playing with a mouse.  A computer screen lists each super-soldier with their real name and “anonym,” which according to the dictionary is “an assumed or false name.” Now I know a new word! The Tiger has almost the same “slicing nearby objects into ribbons” power that Shear had. I guess the Morituri effect was bound to produce a repeat sooner or later. Indeed, there was talk of doing that deliberately, to create a whole roomful of Adepts to analyze war data, but that never panned out. Brava is so far the only Morituri who dresses in her own merchandise, wearing a “Brava” T-shirt in her leisure time. Her death means the end of all of the Peter Gillis characters in this series except for Guy Harding and Kimmo Tuolema. New writers on ensemble books often look for opportunities to showcase their own favorite characters and new creations. Strikeforce Morituri is ideally suited to this due to its hardwired “everybody dies!” premise. 
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Post by rberman on Aug 19, 2018 6:08:27 GMT -5
#29 (April 1989) “Dead Reckoning”
Cover Corner Box features: Burn
The Story: Inside submerged train car filling up with water, Scanner struggles to awaken. The ghosts of his girlfriend Janet, and of Scatterbrain, are ringing in his ears, filling him with warnings about exactly which Paideia leaders are conspiring against him. Is this a hallucination or a message from beyond the grave? He, Lifter, and Burn swim out of the sunken train and way downstream, evading the many Paideia soldiers combing the area in more of a search-and-destroy formation than a rescue team approach.  Revenge and The Ghost fight outside the train wreck. When the fight starts going Revenge’s way, a government helicopter gunship opens up on him as well.   He swims down to the sunken train but can’t find his departed comrades there. When he returns to the surface of the Chattahoochie River (a real body of water in the state of Georgia), dozens of Paideia soldiers are there to greet him.  In Barcelona, Dr. Tuolema is too late to warn Brava about the attack which has already claimed her life. When The Tiger menaces him, Dr. Tuolema explains that the Morituri cure is far from certain; The Tiger, like The Ghost, recognizes that his bosses are unreliable, and like The Ghost he too lets Tuolema live. The Prime Minister of the Paideia is Aunt May! Or a look-alike. Defense Minister Lamont warns her that there’s a plot to kill her. He neglects to mention that he is behind the plot, which he instead pins on Dr. Tuolema, who as a Morituri creator with a history of insubordination is not an unlikely candidate.  My Two Cents: I’m finding less to say about these issues. This one is a straightforward adventure tale with intrigue elements that are building gradually. Two of the three Black Ops guys have decided not to follow orders; given their character set-ups, I would have been more surprised if these criminals toed the line. James Hudnall introduces the mystery of how (or indeed whether) Scatterbrain is speaking to Scanner from beyond the grave. When Hudnall gives his explanation several issues from now, it will be difficult to reconcile with the scenario offered in this issue. Dr. Kimmo Tuolema has two m’s in his first name again! Congratulations, Kimmo! I guess an editor finally caught the typo.
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Post by rberman on Aug 20, 2018 9:20:17 GMT -5
#30 (May 1989) “Getting It”
Cover Corner Box features: Scanner
The Story: Paideia Defense Minister Andre Lamont gloats over the hope of success for his coup, and his plan to frame the Morituri as agents of a terrorist group called Nietzsche. He instructs his underlings to murder The Ghost and The Tiger, fearing (correctly) that their loyalty has been compromised. The Wind is sent to assassinate the Prime Minister of the Paideia.   The Ghost overhears a discussion about this and learns that Lamont is pulling the strings. He vows payback. Don’t mess with ninja! They’ll come and getcha.  Burn, Lifter, and Scanner rescue Revenge from his battle with dozens of Paideia troops. They steal some civilian clothes and decide that the best way to clear their names and warn the Prime Minister of the true conspirators (according to what Scanner heard in a dream from the ghost of Scatterbrain last issue) is to turn themselves in. But before the Morituri can get to Cherokee Mountain in Colorado, The Wind has always laid NORAD waste, murdering lots of people including the Prime Minister. Nooo, not Aunt May! Now Lamont is the acting Prime Minister.    My Two Cents: The trio at the core of the Paideia conspiracy are the Defense Minister, the Commerce Minister, and a war profiteer tycoon named Tanaka. This is a pretty clear commentary on the “military-industrial complex” of American society. The enlarging military budget has been of concern for decades to both Democrats and Republicans, yet few politicians are willing to poke that bear. At one point Scanner predicts that the Paideia will find surely find the Morituri through a combination of aeriel reconnaissance and computer analysis. This was a pretty good guess of future tech for 1989. Most science fiction stories ignore the insidious “Minority Report” way that advancing tech naturally curtails the protective anonymity of our daily lives. On the other hand, The Wind has to call his bosses from a payphone stall at one point. OK, I guess I shouldn’t expect Hudnall to predict future tech in every aspect. There’s also a mention of the Black Ops guys carrying pagers, which is a very 80s thing to do but probably seemed hi tech at the time.  Later the four Morituri huddle in front of that same shop, then steal clothes from there. In a nice touch, the story interior has a dartboard with a Horde face on it. I had assumed that “Cherokee Mountain” was being used as a fictional stand-in for Cheyenne Mountain, the home of NORAD. Maybe, though there is a mountain in Colorado informally known as Cheyenne Mountain. We never did hear any more about the dozens of nukes that hit the Canadian Rockies. Haven’t they had any effect on the world? 
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Post by rberman on Aug 21, 2018 5:41:36 GMT -5
#31 (June 1989) “The Bitter End”
Cover Corner Box features: Lifter
The Story: VAX 117 is back! He reports by “bio-modem” to his bosses VXX 199, giving us a running commentary explaining the story thus far., just in case anyone new decided to buy the very last issue of this comic book series. He reveals that he has replaced Peter Lamont’s lover with a telepathic clone who has been twisting his mind to seize power and eliminate the Morituri. Apparently many such alien duplicates are running around messing with the government.  The Wind has gone nuts. Having killed the Prime Minister of the Paideia inside Cherokee Mountain, Colorado, he’s killing everybody else he can find there also. The Paideia guards outside the mountain agree to let the Morituri in to confront The Wind. "What in Sam Hill" is an expletive I've seen numerous times in comic books but never in real life. I don't know who or where Sam Hill is.  The fight against The Wind isn’t going well, and at one point The Wind contemplates stopping mid-battle to rape Burn.   But ultimately he’s defeated when Revenge accelerates the radioactive decay of The Wind’s hands (I think?), causing him to explode. Should have done that the last time you fought!  The Ghost shows himself and wants to team up with the Morituri to take out new Prime Minister Peter Lamont.  But before they get the chance, Lamont’s bodyguards, who are actually clones working for VAX 117, betray Lamont. He’s arrested and discredited.  The Paideia collapses from a unified world government into a group of independent countries. This is exactly what VAX 117 and his overlords were trying to bring about. He plans to wait ten years and then begin “harvesting” the Earth, which certainly doesn’t sound good. The Tiger is said to be a “key player” in his plans, which also sounds ominous.   The four surviving Morituri pair off, with Scanner and Burn planning to marry, and Revenge and Lifter planning to cohabit. Didn’t these people have lives before the Morituri, families that they want to get back to? Maybe not.   My Two Cents: This issue ends the original Strikeforce: Morituri series, resolving the conspiracy plot begun by Hudnall when he took over writing the series in issue #21. It’s shifted gears from Gillis’ original “Aliens attacking Earth with brute force” story to an “Heroes battle internal corruption to clear their own good names” story, and now in the eleventh hour it’s revealed to be “Aliens attacking earth with fifth columnists.” So “Red Dawn” has transformed into “Invasion of the Body Snatchers.” Still, though aliens are fomenting it all, there’s plenty of plain old human greed and corruption in the mix as well. Ultimately, what difference did the Morituri and their monumental sacrifice make? Nothing in the first twenty issues turned out to matter, except the moment that Dr. Tuolema turned on the beacon that summoned the VXX 199, who demolished the Horde. And even that was just a prelude to the VXX causing the fragile Paideia government to collapse. The Morituri defeated The Wind in Cheyenne Mountain, but the defeat of Lamont was accomplished with his VXX-cloned bodyguards betrayed him. So the short version is that both the Horde and the human cabal were brought low not by brave humans but by powerful aliens.  The VAV/VXX plot is left dangling. A sequel series is promised showing what happens ten years in the future, when technology has granted many people “almost Morituri” powers, and “C-band” headbands connect everyone to “the world’s computer network,” which is a good prediction. This all leaves me wondering whether the following mini-series, Electric Undertow, is what Hudnall wanted to tell all along, and he used his time on this Strikeforce: Morituri series to retool the world into the one he needed for that subsequent story. No more Morituri explosions, no more Horde invasion, no more Paideia. Carlos Garzon inks John Calimee this time around.
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Post by rberman on Aug 22, 2018 5:38:52 GMT -5
Electric Undertow #1 (December 1989) “Street Moves” part one
The Story: Ten years after Peter Lamont’s failed coup and the collapse of the Paideia as a worldwide government, it’s the year 2083, in the country of Pan Cal. A mild version of the Morituri treatment called simply “M” is within the reach of anyone who can pay, producing peak physical fitness but no super powers. Many citizens also have cybernetic “wetwear” implants for accessing the internet directly. Four young super-folk stroll down the street, when one of them self-immolates. “Spontaneous Combustion” they call it, or S.C. for short. Been happening a lot lately. Wonder why!  Burn, now just Yoko Baker, a homemaking mother of two, has to explain to her son why learning from books the old fashioned way is better than downloading knowledge from the internet. Her husband Dan Baker (formerly Scanner) is now a private investigator at “Scanner Investigations.” An agent of the New-Tech corporation wants to hire him to find one of their employees, Juanita Dias, who is romantically involved with a spy from the Tanaka Corporation. (Tanaka was the evil war profiteer tycoon from the first series; looks like he escaped justice.) As Dan ponders the matter, he is approached by the ghost of Scatterbrain, who warns him vaguely of great danger. Yoko comes to visit Dan at work. He’s been staying away from home for weeks, fearful that his visions of Scatterbrain mean that he’s cracking up and a danger to his family.  Three Tanaka super-agents spy on the conversation from the skyscraper next door, and when Dan accepts the job, they attack. Dan and Yoko are able to beat off the three assailants, none of whom survive the encounter. But now they have a new mystery, as these new attackers were of Morituri strength, much more power than the average man on the street can buy. Does that mean someone is using Dr. Tuolema or his technology to crank out muscle? If Yoko and Dan are targets, what does that mean about Revenge, Lifter, T he Ghost, and The Tiger?  My Two Cents: Six months of publishing time after the end of the original Strikeforce Morituri series, the creative team (writer James Hudnall, penciler Mark Bagley, inker Carlos Garzon) return in a new “bookshelf format,” non-Comics Code Approved series that costs $3.95 per issue instead of the $1.50 at which the previous series finished. Wow! What justifies the more-than-double cost? For one, the inking has been upgraded and now looks hand-tinted (courtesy of good work by Christie Scheele), similar to the early Marvel Graphic Novel series. For another thing, this issue is a super-duper sized 53 pages of art, and the later issues would be around 44 pages. I bet these were published ad-free, too. How many books did Marvel release in this format? I will confess to not being a big James Hudnall fan back when he first took over for Peter Gillis, but the soft reboot of a “ten years later” scenario is allowing his own narrative voice to come through, and so far I like it. The alien invasion story has completed its transformation into a hardboiled cyberpunk tale, while carrying along characters that have come to mean something to the reader. The Strikeforce: Morituri logo has a colon in it. But the registered title of this periodical is “Strikeforce Morituri: Electric Undertow,” without a colon between the first two words. Too many colons is unwieldy, and the first colon serves no purpose anyway. The title page reads “Electric Undertow Book One: Street Moves, featuring the characters of Strikeforce: Morituri.” The whole “implanted access to cyberspace” element was popularized by William Gibson’s 1984 novel Neuromancer. Hudnall gives quite a bit of exposition about this whole topic, but it’s not necessary for anyone who has read Gibson. There’s a humorous scene where a police officer is obviously accessing internet data about Scanner and doesn’t know when to shut up with just spitting it all out.  Easter Eggs: The world of Electric Undertow bears little resemblance to the one from the original Strikeforce Morituri series. Perfect specimens of humanity are commonplace, and so are Easter Eggs. Portions of the story are like reading Top Ten or Astro City in this respect. An advertisement promises “10 gigabytes of online memory,” but another character has an upgrade to 30GB. Not a bad prediction for cloud storage, or about how much storage a basic user might need for personal data in 2018. Another ad riffs on the Charles Atlas “Hero of the Beach” ads. A sign touts “Sid’s Body Bank.” In the Micronauts comic book, the Body Banks were an organ repository into which the lower class were forced to make deposits, while the upper class purchased new organs to extend their lives. Another sign promises “Plastique Surgery: Explosive Results.” The hapless guy Andy who exploded on page 1 wore a Captain America tank top. Dan and Yoko’s son is playing a Wolverine video game.
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Post by rberman on Aug 22, 2018 21:51:48 GMT -5
Electric Undertow #1 (December 1989) “Street Moves” part two
The Story: Dan Baker hits the seedy streets of Melrose, Southern California in search of missing New-Tech executive Juanita Dias. The non-Comics Code nature of this book means some sights in the red-light district signage not found in a usual Marvel Comic of the 1980s. Dan keeps seeing Scatterbrain’s ghost, and M-treated individuals keep going up in spontaneous flames. Dan’s informant Random tells him that the three assassins from last issue came from Finland, which is where Dr. Tuolema is from as well. Random also counsels Dan to “Listen to Will,” meaning Scatterbrain. He won’t explain how he knows about Scatterbrain, but he tells Dan where to find Dias.  Dias’ lover sweet-talks her to join Tanaka’s corporate empire. He’s taking her to a Tanaka carrier boat off the California, but Dan intervenes, defeating three techno-assassins in the process. Dias is somewhat relieved when he forces her to return to New-Tech; she was confused by romance and none too sure about her defection. My Two Cents: Yep, all the tropes of cyberpunk are in full force here. Drugs, lowlifes, flechette guns, monofilament garrotes, and internet access, all rolled up together. As common in such stories, the lines between companies and countries are blurring. We hear that the Tanaka Corporation is about to buy the whole country of Korea, which will “make his corporation the second largest in Asia, after the Jade Net.” Dan has succeeded in his mission for New-Tech, but it only makes him a bigger target for Tanaka, who already had it in for him. This issue raises plenty of questions about corporate intrigue and doesn’t touch the fates of Lifter, Revenge, Dr. Tuolema, VAX-117, Guy Harding, or his baby girl with Blackthorn, who should be ten years old by now. Does she have Morituri powers? What about the two children of Burn and Scanner? They seem normal so far, but they could go Jack-Jack at any moment, if they don’t become ransom pawns first.
Easter Eggs: Lots of street signs. “Be all you can be. Be an M.” (“M” is the wimpy version of the Morituri process. It gets you to peak human prowess without bestowing super-powers.) “:Coca-Cola” and “Sony” are just real companies, which I thought was a no-no. “Dagger Bar.” “Holo Time.” “Parts Place.” “Crest Pasties” (a riff on Crest toothpaste, but to cover your nipples) “The Horde Palace” (How quickly the enemy became chic!) “Glitter Time.” “The Prime Rack.” “Aqua Pipe” looks like an ad for Laurie’s hash pipe from Watchmen, and on the next page, graffiti asks, “Who Watches the Watchmen?” “Live! Dog and Pony Show.” “Tyrant’s Saloon!!” “The Dukes.” “Vids ‘n’ Subs; Girls.” “Dr. No’s Holovideo.” “Zunia’s.”  The character name of Random may come from Roger Zelazny’s 1970 novel “Nine Princes in Amber.” Random was one of the aforementioned nine princes. He’s a bit of a puzzle since he seems to have Morituri-level strength in addition to his cyber-abilities, and he basically becomes part of the team from here on out.
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Post by rberman on Aug 23, 2018 16:41:37 GMT -5
Electric Undertow #2 (December 1989) “The Gathering” part one
The Story: Scatterbrain’s ghost gives Dan Baker an exposition dump. Mars’ surface has changed dramatically in the last ten years. Long-time readers know that this must mean that the Horde are still there, having fled Earth to Mars back in issue #26. Earth telescopes ought to be able to see what they are up to. Also, Earth ought to be salvaging all the wrecked Horde ships still in Earth orbit, full of valuable advanced tech. but this isn’t happening, says Scatterbrain, because the other aliens, the VAX 117, have infiltrated Earth governments with thousands of clones who now control everything. Yuck! Dan needs to gather the Morituri for one last mission to take out these alien overlords. Jason “Revenge” Edwards survives a sneak attack by three of Tanaka Corp’s Morituri assassins in Miami. Now he’s wanted for questioning concerning their deaths.  So when Dan and Yoko take the train to visit him, they are turned away at immigration for being his associates.  Random shows up and offers to help them cross the border at night. But while they’re waiting for nightfall in the woods, they’re attacked by three super-powered Tanaka assassins- in fact, the same three that he and Yoko killed last issue! The attackers are defeated once again, but not before Yoko has been apparently lobotomized by the telepathic villain.   In London, Fiona “Lifter” leaves a disappointing date to find herself accosted by a trio of Tanaka super-assassins, whom she dispatches with gusto.  She and Jason “Revenge” Edwards both get surprise calls from someone claiming to be Dan Baker, but we know it can’t be, because Dan is otherwise engaged. Dan’s sudden expertise with computer hacking strikes them as odd. Turns out it was Scatterbrain’s ghost, who has all sorts of bizarre powers now. He orchestrates a meeting between Jason, Fiona, Random, Dan, and Yoko, the latter of whom has recovered from the psychic attack. Scatterbrain also reports that the team needs to go to Finland and kill Dr. Tuolema, who is making all these new assassin Morituri. My Two Cents: Cyberpunk elements recede from here on out. The bulk of this issue is exposition courtesy of Scatterbrain. The content of his information is interesting enough, but it would have been far more interesting for the heroes to discover it organically, rather than a magical dead friend just spilling it all to them. “The Gathering” is a fairly nondescript title, but it’s also the title of the Babylon 5 pilot episode, and knowing that B5 creator JMS is a big comic book fan, I can’t help but wonder whether he lifted the title from here. This issue, which clocks in at 46 pages, came out in December 1989, the same month as the first issue of Electric Undertow. Wow! That’s a hundred pages of comic book right there. Bagley and Garzon must have been drawing this thing non-stop since the moment the previous series ended six months prior. A map explains the political situation. Canada and Mexico are now “Northam” and “Centam” respectively. The United States is subdivided into three large strips: Pan Cal, AgLand, and Atlantia, the latter of which has an armed separatist movement.  There’s more than a little Blade Runner in the scene of police hovercraft patrolling the Miami skyline from above. 
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Post by chaykinstevens on Aug 23, 2018 17:28:30 GMT -5
This issue, which clocks in at 46 pages, came out in December 1989, the same month as the first issue of Electric Undertow. Wow! That’s a hundred pages of comic book right there. Bagley and Garzon must have been drawing this thing non-stop since the moment the previous series ended six months prior. According to Mike's Amazing World, there was a month between the release dates of #1 and 2. I think Marvel may have reduced the gap between release date and cover date from three months to two around this time. |
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Post by rberman on Aug 24, 2018 12:33:53 GMT -5
Electric Undertow #3 (January 1990) “The Mission”
The Story: The Morituri escape the house surrounded by soldiers, with the help of Scatterbrain’s ghost, who takes electronic control of two gunships and causes them to open fire on the Atlantian troops.  Random leads the Morituri to his local contacts, a group of anti-government guerillas whom Revenge has been fighting for the last couple of years. There’s no love lost between him and them, and the terrorists somehow blame the Morituri for the breakup of the Paideia. What, and having a dictator in charge would have been better?  The “ghost of Scatterbrain” that we’ve been seeing in this series turns out to be a government A.I. which downloaded Scatterbrain’s consciousness just before his death, now manifesting through Scanner’s wetwear implants. He gives the team a lot of exposition, including their need to travel to Finland and kill Dr. Tuolema. Dr. Tuolema is working with a Thor-looking guy named Hans who says he will “take care of” the “Morituri problem.”  Looks like the villain superheroes are working for the government, not Dr. Tuolema. Each time they die, he can download their consciousness into a new clone body, sort of Altered Carbon-style. But they are running through their spare bodies quickly.  When the Morituri confront Dr. Tuolema, he denies any intent to kill them, even though we just saw him call Morituri “a problem” a couple of pages ago. Maybe he was talking about the surviving black ops Morituri, The Tiger and The Ghost? Those two are M.I.A. in this story, probably being saved for a sequel series that never came.   Then the super-villains attack. After a brief battle in which some of the baddies die, Europa military scrambles some fighter craft which chase the rest away, and Dr. Tuolema’s beautiful young wife Laura uses teleportation powers to bring the heroes to safety. They confront Scatterbrain: Why did he tell them to kill Tuolema? Oops, he says, I was wrong about that. Sorry! What you really need to do is attack the Forbidden City in Beijing, because the VXX 199 aliens are there. Trust me! My Two Cents: In the first two issues, I had the sense that the plot was really moving. There was real potential in the exploration of a USA, rent into three competing countries, each with internal strife as well. But this issue was heavy on exposition and light on real forward motion. It boils down to “The Morituri travel to Finland because Scatterbrain mistakenly said Dr Tuolema is their enemy.” Oops, says Scatterbrain. Mea culpa!  So, Scatterbrain. Scanner has been communicating telepathically with him ever since joining the team, at which time Scatterbrain was alive but comatose after experiencing death while psychically linked to a dying Horde soldier. Then even after Scatterbrain died, he appeared to communicate with Scanner in a dream when Scanner was awakening after the train explosion back in issue #29. That issue took place before Scanner had a cyberpunk implant, so the “military AI accessing your brain through your implant” can’t be the explanation for the submerged train car appearance. I guess that one really was just Scanner hallucinating about Scatterbrain, like he was hallucinating about his dead girlfriend? But no, Scatterbrain gave important exposition in that appearance, so it must have been real. So either the real Scatterbrain was communicating with Scanner from beyond the grave, or else the AI Scatterbrain was communicating with Scanner sans cyber-implant. That’s not a lot of story for 48 interior pages. Basically, the purpose of this issue is simply to keep Dr. Tuolema in play for new readers, but it would have been better to give him something to do that actually advances the plot. Maybe sending these new Morituri on a mission? Maybe helping to fix some problem the existing Morituri have? Instead, he’s witness to an inconclusive battle between the Morituri and nine foes who apparently serve the world dictators. On the plus side, the art is good; we’re a long way from Bagley’s inauspicious early issues.  When Hudnall first introduced Revenge, he was a bitter tough guy, forced into the Morituri simply because he was biologically compatible with the treatment. There’s little hint of that now; he’s just another good natured do-gooder.
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Post by rberman on Aug 25, 2018 7:37:21 GMT -5
Electric Undertow #4 (February 1990) “The Attack” The Story: Laura Tuolema gives the team a teleport ride to Beijing then leaves them. They enter the Forbidden City to destroy the alien A.I. known as Emperor, but it separates them inside the palace. Scanner and Burn are treated to an illusion showing that the Horde on Mars have mutated into a new werewolf-looking form:  Revenge and Lifter are captured, and we get several pages of them reliving their lives up to that point. The team then must fight another round of clone versions of the bad guys from the previous issue.  The Scatterbrain AI appears to have been destroyed, but it’s actually downloaded into Random, who has access to “a trillion gigabytes” of wetwear storage.  The Morituri destroy the alien who somehow runs the Emperor A.I. and embed themselves into an organic shuttle craft, piloting it toward a showdown with the alien mothership behind the moon.  My Two Cents: A reasonable battle issue of 46 pages, with an element of “the team splits up and faces a series of threats separately before reuniting” familiar to readers of Fantastic Four, X-Men, or other Bronze Age team books. The four page flashback sequence added no new insights or twists to the plot, which is disappointing for reading in a trade edition, but when originally released in serial form, such flashbacks are expected every several issues.  The plot has come full circle, with the “human conspiracy to topple the government” giving way to a black-and-white battle against an alien invader, although the VXX 199 are sneakier than the Horde. But it’s also an impersonal threat, since they don’t talk back, try to bargain, or try to tempt the heroes. Once inside the alien stronghold, it’s a straightforward battle of strength vs strength. After a big buildup to the Forbidden City, it turns out to contain only one alien, who dies without a fight.  Every element in this story is pure Hudnall; all of Gillis’ ideas have completely gone by the wayside, and not a single one of Hudnall’s heroes has perished since he began introducing them back in issue #21 of the first series. To top it all off, even the Horde have been renovated. Their original form looked weird, with the scrotum-looking air sacs dangling beneath their chins, but at least it was an original look, whereas the new Horde look like generic beast-men.
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Post by rberman on Aug 25, 2018 20:31:05 GMT -5
Electric Undertow #5 (March 1990) “The Battle”
The Story: Three pages of silently approaching the alien ship behind the moon. Two pages of opening credits. Eight pages of strategizing before the Morituri-no-more leave their shuttlecraft. I guess you can afford decompression when you have 48 page to play with, you can afford some decompression!  Lifter uses her TK to establish an artificial gravity so they can walk, which I must say is a clever use of that power which I can’t recall seeing elsewhere. The plan is for Scatterbrain-in-Random to use Scanner’s detection powers to interface with the alien mothership’s computer system and take it over. Failing that, the team should try to destroy the ship the hard way.  I guess the aliens overheard the exposition, because they quickly separate Scanner and Random from the rest, who first get confused by illusion duplicates of their friends, then tangle with monstrous snakey creatures that may also be illusory. That’s a great shot of the creepy crawlers!   The two heroes begin their psychic exploration of the enemy ship to locate its mainframe, entering cyberspace as a united consciousness.    Then follows pages of exposition describing the VXX 199’s movements through space, taking over worlds with cloned fifth columnists. The spontaneous combustion striking various humans is a “psychic overload” resulting from the aliens’ meddling with the human race; the deaths of humans release a psychic energy which the aliens harvest. “The deaths of the original Morituri would somehow accelerate” the spontaneous combustion cases, which doesn’t make any sense that I can see. We also see confirmation that the Horde are on a terraformed Mars, being mutated into a stronger species which will eventually be worthy of takeover by VXX 199. Lifter, Revenge, and Burn cause enough damage to the organic ship that Scatterbrain and Scanner are able to prevail in their cyber-attack. Scatterbrain takes over the enemy A.I., vacating Random’s mind and returning his own consciousness to dominance. Victory!  My Two Cents: As the enemy ship burns and collapses, Scatterbrain speaks to the team about all the plot threads that have been left dangling. He doesn’t even mention the question of whether Morituri babies (Burn and Scanner have two kids, and what about Blackthorn’s daughter, who is now ten years old?) will be super-powered like their parents. But it’s all a moot point, because none of those stories ever got told. This issue was the final chapter in the Morituri-verse, which would only occasionally be referenced as an alternate reality in later Marvel Comics.  I confess to feeling a bit let down by the simplicity of the finale. It all happened exactly as they discussed on the boarding craft. Enter the alien ship, take over the A.I., and flee the ship. The media satire elements went away. The conspiracy and intrigue went away. The noir detective element went away. In the end, an omniscient A.I. led the team by the nose from location to location while churning out exposition. No moral tests awaited anyone. So it’s kind of a bummer to see a series pregnant with such ambiguity and erudition end in a Neuromancer-inspired slugfest that failed to make sense of how the psychic stress of alien harvesting was causing people all over the world to burst into flame in a process that apparently had nothing to do with the similarly self-immolating Morituri effect. The alien ship that seemed so formidable when it annihilated a Horde fleet barely put up a fight against a single squad. Too bad.
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