This issue hits all the great notes of Choi’s mini-series script, comprised of four stories, each with a different artist – Jim Lee on Caitlin Fairchild, Richard Johnson on Burnout and Rainmaker, J. I’ll have to read more to see what fate holds for them.)īrandon Choi and company also broke up the wait for the big debut with a #0 issue (technically part of the 1994 mini-series) to explain the team’s separate road trips after Wizard #1/2. I have a lot of affection for this cast based almost exlusively on the mini-series, and I’d hate to see them quickly devolve into a group of sex mannequins. (I have no rationale to offer for the amped up sexuality of the art. On the whole it has the same high-gloss look of his pencils on the mini-series, just with slightly more room for error in the looser constraints of real world California rather than the tech-festooned hallways of IO’s Death Valley base. Gen13 mining this territory is no different than Chris Claremont inserting Kitty Pryde into the X-Men and giving her a pet purple dragon.Īs for Campbell? This is only his sixth full-length issue, and he was under enormous pressure. Jim Lee and Brandon Choi had already learned their lesson on WildCATs and Stormwatch, which were each so thick with continuity that they hardly seemed to be about anything other than re-connecting with long-lost enemies.Īlso, without a youthful book in the mix at WildStorm they line was missing the chance to do these sorts of stories – stories with cartoonish extra-dimension villains and the annoying green space rats they’re hunting.
To make Gen13 all about bashing heads with IO from the first issue would have been foolish. We still get signs hints that Fairchild’s journey will be as a tactician and leader, and that’s not going to happen overnight. To force the young team’s new life to be seen exclusively through the eyes of Caitlin the all-night studier would stunt the growth of the book and the cast.Įvery character needs her or his spotlight issues, and this is Roxy’s.
#Freefall gen 13 series
Those details quickly drove me away from the book back in the 90s, but in retrospect I can see the reason for all of them.įairchild was intentionally the most generic character in the original series – a bookworm turned she-hulk – but fans responded more to the other four characters, each a familiar archetype.
This is exacerbated by a lack of backgrounds and a bright, almost-neon color pallette from Wendy Stouts, which strips characters of the muscular heft they had in the miniseries.Īlso, what was a depiction of playful teen sexuality in the mini-series is now deliberate pandering, as with the nude Rainmaker (suddenly a sexbomb with long hair) and upskirt shots of Roxy’s underwear. His long-legged women are nothing different from his prior five issues, but his proportions here are not as consistent, as on Grunge’s once-massive chest. Scott Campbell’s art has already begun to tip from comic book exaggeration to ridiculous deformity. Less tangible than those developments is that newcomer J. Instead, we get a mismatched pair of interdimension assassins hunting down a ridiclous green alien rodent. There’s no IO or government intrigue about the team’s origins in sight. It’s nearly the reverse of the line-up of the mini-series, where Roxy and Grunge broke up the drama with occasional comic relief while the remaining trio handled all the heavy lifting. There are a few key differences between this relaunch and the team’s mini-series., other than the obvious one of the team not being under pressure in life-or-death circumstances the entire time.įirst, Fairchild is relegated to the background in favor of breakout stars Roxy and Grunge, with Burnout barely appearing and Rainmaker purely used for titilation. Scott Campbell made a wise move in their pivot away from the tone of the mini-series. Yet, despite not enjoying it in 1995 or 21 years later in 2016, I can appreciate that Brandon Choi and J. Gen13 #1 lacks the special magic that imbued each issue of the team’s mini-series – even the gratuitous cameo from Pitt.
( Here’s the best recap of the covers I’ve ever seen!) The series would go on to be WildStorm’s longest-running book, and it debuted in memorable fashion with thirteen variant covers, which might not sound impressive today in the world of 50-states covers from both Marvel and DC but at the time was unheard of. After the amazing Gen13 mini-series I (and many other comic fans!) were rabid for more, which arrived in the form of the team’s first ongoing series in March 1995.
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