Post by rberman on Nov 13, 2018 11:55:37 GMT -5
We3 #1 (October 2004)
The Story: A crime lord in his heavily guarded mansion faces a hail of bullets from something that slinks out of the ductwork. Three “somethings” in fact—a dog (Bandit), cat (Tinker), and rabbit (Pirate), wearing armored exoskeletons. They exit the burning manor, enter a freight truck, and are driven off into the night.
At an Air Force installation, top brass tour a research facility where mice can be controlled with a joystick to take up arms against each other, and larger mammals have their own projects.
The general announces that this project with cybernetically enhanced animals is over; the specimens are to be decommissioned, i.e. euthanized, in favor of other avenues of research.
This does not sit well with head scientist Roseanne Berry, who allows the three animal soldiers to escape into the night.
My Two Cents: This is the story of which Grant Morrison said, “I love that thing. I wept as I was writing it.” He concocted this story during his tenure on New X-Men. As part of that story, the Weapon Plus program was developing a series of anti-mutant soldiers, from Weapon I (Captain America) through Weapon X (Wolverine) on to Weapon XV (Ultimaton). Morrison had a notion that some of the early Weapons might have involved non-human mammals, but he never pursued that story within the X-Men. Instead, it surfaced here shortly after Morrison's return to DC, as a separate mini-series which is equal parts Short Circuit and The Incredible Journey.
We can tell from the start that this is not going to end well. Aside from the whole “military project gone rogue, now hunted by its masters” angle, we’re also told that the animals will die anyway without regular medicine. The armor enhances their communication skills sufficiently so that they can speak baby talk to each other. An armored exo-skeleton makes some sense for the dog Bandit (whose function is a tank) and perhaps the rabbit Pirate (a demolitions expert who drops explosive rabbit pellets). Not so much for the cat, said to be the stealthy one. I’d think a cat spy would be invaluable for sneaking into places, but the bulky armor detracts from that role. It would have been better to imagine the cat in, er, a catsuit that turns it invisible or something.
Morrison and his frequent collaborator artist Frank Quitely also use this series to experiment with novel strategies of visual storytelling. This issue’s experiment is a six page sequence in which each page consists of eighteen square panels showing surveillance camera footage around the military lab. Each camera has its own color palette, and the selected scenes often depict images from just before or after the action takes place, rather than during it, which heightens the suspense.
Quitely recalls drawing the individual sequences from each security camera, the time spent deciding the order in which to put the final sequence, and how his work was almost lost:
The Story: A crime lord in his heavily guarded mansion faces a hail of bullets from something that slinks out of the ductwork. Three “somethings” in fact—a dog (Bandit), cat (Tinker), and rabbit (Pirate), wearing armored exoskeletons. They exit the burning manor, enter a freight truck, and are driven off into the night.
At an Air Force installation, top brass tour a research facility where mice can be controlled with a joystick to take up arms against each other, and larger mammals have their own projects.
The general announces that this project with cybernetically enhanced animals is over; the specimens are to be decommissioned, i.e. euthanized, in favor of other avenues of research.
This does not sit well with head scientist Roseanne Berry, who allows the three animal soldiers to escape into the night.
My Two Cents: This is the story of which Grant Morrison said, “I love that thing. I wept as I was writing it.” He concocted this story during his tenure on New X-Men. As part of that story, the Weapon Plus program was developing a series of anti-mutant soldiers, from Weapon I (Captain America) through Weapon X (Wolverine) on to Weapon XV (Ultimaton). Morrison had a notion that some of the early Weapons might have involved non-human mammals, but he never pursued that story within the X-Men. Instead, it surfaced here shortly after Morrison's return to DC, as a separate mini-series which is equal parts Short Circuit and The Incredible Journey.
We can tell from the start that this is not going to end well. Aside from the whole “military project gone rogue, now hunted by its masters” angle, we’re also told that the animals will die anyway without regular medicine. The armor enhances their communication skills sufficiently so that they can speak baby talk to each other. An armored exo-skeleton makes some sense for the dog Bandit (whose function is a tank) and perhaps the rabbit Pirate (a demolitions expert who drops explosive rabbit pellets). Not so much for the cat, said to be the stealthy one. I’d think a cat spy would be invaluable for sneaking into places, but the bulky armor detracts from that role. It would have been better to imagine the cat in, er, a catsuit that turns it invisible or something.
Morrison and his frequent collaborator artist Frank Quitely also use this series to experiment with novel strategies of visual storytelling. This issue’s experiment is a six page sequence in which each page consists of eighteen square panels showing surveillance camera footage around the military lab. Each camera has its own color palette, and the selected scenes often depict images from just before or after the action takes place, rather than during it, which heightens the suspense.
Quitely recalls drawing the individual sequences from each security camera, the time spent deciding the order in which to put the final sequence, and how his work was almost lost:
And we (Morrison and Quitely) sat and played with this for hours to see how many different ways we could make the sequence work. It took weeks and weeks to do those six pages. Weeks! And the other thing was… because they were all in a little box, that became quite bashed, and still very light because it was just tens sheets of light weight paper, my wife actually put it on the bin; she was walking away from the bin and she obviously thought that maybe it wasn’t a completely empty box. She presumed that there should be just another piece of rubbish on it, but something made her go back and check and realized… And instead of being apologetic, saying “Sorry, I nearly throw out three weeks’ worth of work”, she actually said: “Why do you have to work that way?! Who else does this? Who else spents three weeks working on this?” (https://www.zonanegativa.com/interview-with-frank-quitely/)
