Transformers Stormbringer 2

Transformers Stormbringer 2 

Summary:

Jetfire is interrogated by Bludgeon who is leading a team who found Thunderwing and intend to continue his work in more then one way. 

Jetfire appeals to Bludgeon, reminding him that  it was Thunderwing who brought Cybertron to the brink of destruction. 

Bludgeon reminds Jetfire that Thunderwing, who predicted  the  catastrophic event that hit Cybertron, warned Jetfire and other scientists regardless of allegiance and they did nothing.

Optimus Prime  receives a message in regards to the  destruction of the Calabi Yau,  send by Nosecone and Afterburner.  He calls in The Wreckers in case Thunderwing indeed is back.  

Thunderwing  is  restored to power by the pocket of  energon that brought the Calabi Yau to Cybertron in the first place and Bludgeon reveals that he plans to use Jetfire and the Technobots as raw materials  for the grafting process, that  turned Thunderwing in to what he is now. 

Bludgeon uses an  axis cradle, to briefly control Thunderwing and  turn him to the next  planet  to destroy. 

Nebulos. 

Where Bludgeon wil let Thunderwing  loose. 

Nosecone and Afterburner manage to get out of their escape pod  and barely functional, make their way across the surface of Cybertron. 

However, they don't get far. The radiation plays merry hell with their systems and they are easily rounded  up by a group of centurion drones.  

Pptimus Prime  travels to Cybertron, telling The Wreckers to rendezvous with him.

Springer tells Prime that  he may want to consider to just destroy the planet, if Thunderwing is indeed back. 

Prime reluctantly considers this an option. 

Prime reminisces  back to when thunderwing was apparently defeated, when Megatron advocated the same course of action. Prime vehemently disagreed. 

An infiltration unit on Nebulos witness Thunderwing  exiting foldspace, 

and ready to bring Armageddon to Nebulos. 

Notes : Stormbringer  2 is issue 8, in the short lived sub numbering. 

It's not said with so many words, but  one can  assume that Bludgeon uncovered  Thunderwing  while looking in to Shockwave's  research and whatever else he was busy with, before he disappeared in Spotlight Shockwave.

Credits :

Writer : Simon Furman

Artist : Don figueroa

Colors : Josh Burcham

Editor: Chris Ryall and Dan Taylor

Review:

Portents : ominous, prose : purple. 

That's how Stormbringer 2 opens, just as ominously as 1. 

We get to see our first  glimpse of yet another alien  planet, and this one is  rather  well known to any Transformers fan, especially G1. 

Nebulos 

Unfortunately, it's the Nebulos of the cartoon, which means that  they are  bald green aliens. 

While this helps selling the  alien part of  the world, it  also makes everybody  look the same. 

We also get to see  another infiltration unit, consisting of Dreadwind, Darkwing, Ruckus,

Skullcruncher, Thrust, Crankcase and Roadgrabber. 

Not exactly a group of individuals  you'd expect to  infiltrate and  slowly destabilise the  political climate of  any given world. 

Ruckus and Skullcruncher were never much of the subtle sorts.  

Thunderwing himself  continues to be a hollow empty shell, what's worse  he  has been reduced to a drone. 

Something that can be pointed at a target and fired and forgotten about. Untill its done and ready to come home, which is exactly what Bludgeon is doing this issue. 

What is more interesting about Thunderwing, is what he has done to himself. 

And that Bludgeon, who looks like a self mutilator in this  universe, plans  to replicate 

the grafting process. 

The pretender process in other words. 

In G1  the pretenders were one of the  umpteenth gimmicks, Hasbro threw at an exasperated Bob Budiansky, who had to  work it all in his running narrative of the US Transformers with  ...varying degrees of success. Reducing the Autobots  to  20 foot tall humanoids because the Decepticons  would  never suspect  them being Autobots, oh no  just giant humans. 

Not one of Budiansky's better stories.

The conceit worked better off Earth, where it was established that  most of the universe are Transformers sized  and  humans are just very small.

an idea i  rather  liked after all why should the rest of the universe  conform to human standards  ?

The Japanese series, Masterforce handled the pretenders better still, by having the  pretender shells be actually human sized and the  internal Transformers  grow to  Transformer size, when they left the shell. 

The pretenders were  quickly pushed aside for the mostly human cast in that series though, but that's neither here nor there. 

Pretenders were mostly a disguise and one of the goofier, poorly handled gimmicks of  Generation One. 

In Stormbringer however pretender armor or the grafting process, was meant to become  armor and literally weather the storm of Cybertron's eventual  decay and possible demise. 

That didn't work out so well for Thunderwing. The process drove him insane, as well as  immeasurably powerfull, to the point that he brought Cybertron to the brink  and it took all the combined Autobot and Decepticon armies had and more. 

And here he is fuelled by ultra energon  ! 

Ore 13 by any other name. 

You think the stakes weren't high enough yet ?

Why Bludgeon found it necessary to send Thunderwing  to Nebulos and  raze the place to the ground isn't entirely made clear. What is clear is that he plans to replicate the grafting  process using  Jetfire and the Technobots as raw material ...nasty.  

What we also get, is the  introduction of the Wreckers in the IDW-verse.

The Wreckers were originally introduced in the Transformers Marvel UK comic, specifically in part 4 of Target 2006. 

They were a rat-tag bunch of  obscure toys and comic only characters and were, so I  gather wildly popular.

So popular that they have been resurrected briefly by Dreamwave and they are resurrected here, by the one who created them in the first place. 

The Wreckers on display here are pretty much The Wreckers of Time Wars, sans RacknRuin.

Springer, Roadbuster, Broadside, Sandstorm, Whirl,  Twintwist and Topspin.

Scoop seems to be a temporary member  and as we later learn  the line up of The Wreckers is  volatile and liable to change any given mission. 

The Wreckers here are presented as the last  line of defence. When phase six has hit the fan and when the whole contested planet has been turned  in to a disaster area, The Wreckers are brought in to deal with it. 

We also get to see what phase six  actually means for a planet  ..and well to  quote  Ratchet, it's not anything good. 

We only get  2 and half pages of  The Wreckers in action, but  that's already enough to  give Roadbuster and Springer quite a bit of personality. 

Though mostly they come over as hardnosed gruff,  take no slag from anybody soldiers  that live, eat, breath and sleep war. 

For some reason I always though the way Springer  talked on the communication device and then tosses it  back to Broadside over his shoulder, while Varas exploded around  him, to be darkly amusing. 

What exactly happened the fist time around with Thunderwing, isn't made exactly clear. We do get another flashback, just after the  apparent demise of  Thunderwing.

And Megatron  advocating to nuke the whole planet out of existence. 

A pragmatic if  extremely cold view of doing things, but which fits Megatron's current characterisation. 

Prime naturally  disagrees, but Megatron's cold pragmatism is echoed by Springer in the present, who advices Prime that if its indeed Thunderwing. Both Thunderwing and  Cybertron should  be burned out of existence, underlining the seriousness of the situation. Whole planets could and will burn  if Thunderwing is let loose and all it will costs is your homeplanet Prime. 

What a choice to make. 

Stormbringer 2  is a great  issue. It's all  that issue 1 was and wanted to be and much more. 

The story, while still fairly slow moving, still is packed.

So packed that I haven't even touched Dogfight's youthfull eagerness to get in to a mission, along side Optimus Prime no less. 

Or Afterburner and Nosecone's plight on the surface of Cybertron where they  encounter that other old Marvel UK mainstay, guardian drones named centurions here. 

These ones are not yellow however, nor ridiculously unreliable. 

Everything that was wrong with Stormbringer 1, is fixed  here. The story slowly ratchets up the tension, while we gradually get to understand the seriousness of the situation and what exactly Thunderwing, or rather the shell that is Thunderwing has become, is capable off.

Even worse, is that Bludgeon is sending it out randomly and plans to duplicate the process for himself. 

Throw in the fact  that Thunderwing is fuelled by Ultra Energon and the stakes have  become immeasurably high. 

But issue 2 isn't even done with that. It introduces Nebulos, The Wreckers and several other concepts  as well as Prime's moral dilemma in how far he is willing to go to  destroy Thunderwing. 

Is his homeplanet, even in ruins as it is, worth more then  the countless other planets  Thunderwing can destroy ?

Cracking stuff and the promise of  Stormbringer 1 is fulfilled here and in issue 3  we will see just exactly what Thunderwing is capable of. 

It wont be pretty. 

  

The Savage Dragon 5

The Savage Dragon 5    

Summary:  We open to see Dragon punching Doubleheader's lights out, and Mighty Man flies across the  horizon.

Dragon thinks he saw him, but  reasons with him self it was just a figment of his imagination.

The core of Freak Force, Dart, Barbaric, Horridus and Rapture, are gathered together  in the police station.

Frank keeps avoiding Dragon and captain Stewart tells Dart she cant use her darts anymore. Cesspool the zitman from issue 4,  has pressed charges due to excessive force.  

Just at that moment Mrs Harris storms in to the police station and chews Dragon out. Because she was  questioned about her half hour phone call, with Arnold Dimple. 

When she  storms off again, Rapture asks what that was all about.  

Downtown in the Viscous Circle headquarters, a superfreak with long blue fingernails and  mechanical spiderlegs, lays down the facts that threatening Frank Darling is a useless waste of time.

Overlord rather...disagrees.  

Freak Force and Dragon  are training in the abandoned underground.

Barbaric over reacts when Rapture shocks him and accidentally nearly  kills her. Prompting Dragon to  rescue her, halt the training exercise and proceeds to chew the idiot out.

But  his  dressing down is interrupted by his beeper. 

At the  police station Mrs Schwartzblatt is  looking for her boy Rodney and Frank's house is trashed by a superfreak.  Who is about to brutalise Frank, untill  Dragon  comes in between. 

Frank finally spills his guts and comes clean with Dragon. 

Later on Freak Force has tracked the Annihilators, a dissenting splinter group of freaks from the Viscous Circle, headed by Cyberface  the Vicious Circles former second in command, to their  lair. 

And the battle is joined.

Credits:

Writer and artist : Erik Larsen

Letters : Chris Eliopolous

Colors : Steve Oliff, Antonia Kohl, Squeeky Zindel

Editor : Jannie Wong.

Notes:  This issue is  17  pages and  is the last issue  with a back up story.

Josh Eichorns title: America's favorite whistling hobo. 

Review : This is the issue  that  introduced a tradition in the  credits page that still stands to this day. 

Actually that is  issue 4, but  he only get mentioned in the credits of the back up story. This is the first  issue  where  it happens in the main credits.

Josh Eichorn, Erik Larsen's assistant  and dogsbody  and whatever else he is, gets his first insulting nickname.

And right now,  23 years later and older, he still has a  new nickname\ title  in each new  issue of the Dragon.

To uphold this proud tradition, each review will  list his title for that issue. 

Whistling hobo's ahoy ! 

But what about issue 5  itself  ?

Well let's find out.

The cover it self is pretty mleh, with Dragon punching out  some random  double headed  guy, in front of a MASSIVE logo. 

And on the front page he is punching out the same guy, who is off course named Doubleheader.

It's a little bit I always thought was funny. 

The cover actually represents a scene from the book. 

This issue is also the one that kicks the long simmering Frank is being blackmailed subplot, in to high gear.

It's been on the background for 5 months now and  more then year if you count  the  mini series from 1992  and it's coming to a head  right here.

The vicious circles demands escalate to the point that they send a superfreak to brutalise Frank and  thrash his house. 

And then finally, Frank  comes clean to Dragon.

If it sounds  like I am exasperated with the storyline, it's not because I am. 

It's just because it is a  long running subplot, that  gets lip service over the past 4 issues and up untill now, there just wasn't much to say about it.

Frank spills his guts, which pretty much reads like a  recap of  the original mini series and all the issues up till now. Making issue 5 quite the new reader friendly. 

It's dense and skips over a lot of things, but it gets the main points across.

The Vicious Circle wants Frank to do something about freak force, but he is in no position to do anything about it and the Viscous Circle  isn't in a mood to listen.   

Unsurprisingly Dragon, doesn't plan to leave the force because in his own words its all he has got, which is true enough.

Dragon also surmises that Frank's career is  as good as over, and that the best  thing for him to do, is to disappear .

Exactly how, they plan to make Frank disappear we will find out soon enough. 

Dragon does however harbor no ill will, towards Frank despite being manipulated and lied too. 

Dragon has his faults but harbouring grudges isn't one of them apparently, he is still willing to help Frank  no matter what.

We also get to see Overlord, lording the Vicious Circle around and disintegrating one of his underlings, for daring to talk back to him.

Unfortunately, the underling had more then enough good points about Frank Darling,  being in no position to do anything and threatening him is a big waste of time. 

This sets Overlord up as the Darth Vader school of leadership. 

Make a mistake and  you are dead. 

But it also shows he is arrogant, petty and unwilling to listen to anybody but himself.

It's not much and pretty much a dime in a dozen of evil criminal  err overlords. 

But it's something other then  having Overlord muhahahahing, how he is over and lord and lording it over Chicago.

 

This issue also  touched upon  other subplots.

Dart gets in to trouble about using her darts on zitman in issue 4,  as it's considered excessive force. 

And Mrs Harris storms in to the police station, incensed that Dragon's cops buddies had the nerve  to  interrogate her.

Which prompts Dragon to give Rapture another condensed history of what happened with Debbie. 

Unfortunately, Mrs Harris portrayal steadily is eroding the initial sympathy you'd feel for her. Because she keeps irrationally blaming Dragon for the death of her daughter.

People do irrational things in their grief, but this comic book trope  of blaming the titular hero for your own mistakes, is particularly galling  with the Dragon. Especially since it was at best, an accident and at worst she enticed Dimple to head over to Dragon's apartment. 

Either way, there was nothing Dragon could have done.

And the way  this title  generally  bends clichés and conventions, it's a bit disappointing to see this one cropping up  

Speaking of long running subplots, not Aunt May err  Mrs Schwartzblatt, decided to turn up to the police station but Dragon is out  !

Drat !

I swear though, she  looks  like Aunt May, the  way  Erik Larsen drew her, just with glasses on.

 This is one of the last times I will  actually mention this subplot, until oh say issue 11 or  14. 

But for now  the question if  Dragon actually is Rodney or not, is still up in the air. 

After painstakingly building  them up and pulling characters left and right, this issue also  ees Freak Force's inaugural appearance, as a whole. 

...Mostly,  Superpatriot and Mighty Man are  absent for now, but the core is here.

Dart, Barbaric, Horridus, Ricochet on the peripheral and lastly and  in the most  ridiculously skimpy costume yet, Rapture. 

Rapture will come to play  quite a large part in this series, but right now she is all skin tight skimpy outfits, cleavage, flirting with Dragon and electric powers.

Rapture was actually introduced in the back up story of Savage Dragon 4, but this is where she makes her proper debut  both written and drawn by Larsen. 

We also learn that Barbaric is an idiot and he will always remain an idiot  over the course of the series.

 And has a bit of a temper problem. 

Shown during a training session when Rapture  shocks him and throws half a wall at her.  Forcing Dragon to save her and berate the idiot. 

Sadly Barbaric never becomes too effective in the course of the series, and I always roll my eyes when he shows up. 

Issue 5  kicks  off  a 3 parter to stitch up several  long running subplots.

Introduces Rapture, Freak Force and is  new reader friendly, what's not to like about it  ?

Other then the bloody awfull uninspired cover. 

Transformers Spotlight 02 Nightbeat

Transformers Spotlight 2

Nightbeat

Summary:

Nightbeat is contacted by Krakon, a mercenary, offering him the flight recorder of the very first Ark, which  has  disappeared eons ago, all hands  lost. 

This is an offer and a mystery Nightbeat can't refuse.

But when he rendezvous with Krakon's ship he finds him very much dead  and the flight recorder gone.

Nightbeat's investigations point him to Gorlam Prime.  

After orbital jumping down to the planet, Nightbeat reconfigures himself to look more  like one of the local vehicles. 

Oddly enough, the people of Gorlam Prime  are  much more technologically advanced  then was originally believed with many of them upgrading their organic forms  with cybernetics.

Nightbeat can't help but wonder if this is how Cybertron once started too. 

Regardless, all this  and mysterious excavation sites to boot, point towards outside influence.  

Despite his better instincts about everything, being a set up, his curiosity gets the better of Nightbeat and he discovers a massive shimmering portal  looking like a lake of  quicksilver. 

Nightbeat is soon confronted by four smaller Transformers, the eventual fate of all inhabitants of Gorlam Prime perhaps and runs and fights for his freedom, but it proves to be useless. He is captured all the same.

Nightbeat  flashes in and out of consciousness, while unspeakable things are being done to his cranial structure. Installing cerebral  implants in his brain, turning him in to a sleeper agent and wiping his memory of the last  few cycles in the process. 

Later Nightbeat finds himself back on his ship, in his  normal body. Having no recollection of anything that has happened, while musing  over the  big three mysteries.  Which is when Optimus Prime contacts him. 

Nightbeat's services are needed on earth, however Nightbeat can't shake the feeling that he is missing something. 

Credits :

Writer : Simon furman

Artist : MD Bright

Colors : John Rauch

Letters: Sulaco Studios

Editor: Chris Ryall and Dan Taylor

Notes : This issue came with 4 different covers

Nightbeat considers the big three mysteries. 

We know the disappearance of the Ark is the  first one. Later down the line we found out that the Seething Moon is the second, but the third is as of yet unknown.

It might be the actual origin of Cybertron and the Transformers.   

Review :

And this brings us to the second spotlight.

And by the gods, the art by MD ( Mark  or doc ) Bright is atrocious !

It has to be said. 

I have no idea what happened here, because MD Bright was and still is capable of  fantastic art.

He was a penciller for Gi-joe,  The Amazing Spiderman vs Wolverine one shot,  ( yes that one where Ned Lees got  killed )  Quantum and Woody and a string of Iron Man  comics. 

He even did that  iconic cover of  Marvel G1 issue 5, that every body knows. 

So what the hell happened here  ?

Clearly Mr Bright had a bad day, was under time crunch or things just didn't gel.  Because the art is atrocious. 

Thankfully for all it's faults and murky colors, MD Bright's story telling skills are still as strong as ever. 

But what about the story it self  ?

Well if you judge a comic by story only, this is one of the best spotlights period. 

Nigthbeat was one of Furman's pet characters in his  G1 run, along with Grimlock and Thunderwing. And possibly Scorponok and Optimus Prime. Both of the latter have gotten seminal  portrayals by Furman in his late G1 run and his portrayal of Prime still resonates though various incarnations of the character, 25 years later. 

But this is about Nightbeat not Optimus Prime, not yet anyway.  

Spotlight Nightbeat  introduces several interesting plotpoints and conceits.

The first of which is that the first Ark disappeared millions of years ago, for reasons unknown. 

The second is Gorlam Prime, which is a planet that  is on the cusp between full organic and full robotic  bodies.

The inhabitants are  bionic and replacing parts of their body piecemeal, with cybernetic implants transitioning from organic to biomechanical. 

Nightbeat can't help but wonder if Cybertron, whose origins and with it the origins of  the Transformers, have been lost to the mists of time, have been similar like this. 

Which is a wonderfull idea, because Furman set out  to  start a Transformers mythology, with out  the matrix, Unicron or Primus. 

But sadly not much in terms of the Transformers origin is done with it. 

Gorlam Prime and the Ark 1 and where it went to, and what it found there will become recurring threads through out the IDW Transformers, though all the way to 2014.  Where it will all come to a head.  

Right now however, all we have  is tantalising mysteries and speculations, as well as what is happening with Gorlam Prime and who is messing with it.

We do get a  few glimpses as to what is happening to the inhabitants though, with the introduction of the Micromasters.

Or at least, the characters that once were the Micromasters. 

It's not said with as many words, but the comic  infers that they are the end station of the evolution of Gorlam Prime.

And unfortunately, they are under the thrall of whoever is pulling the strings. 

Whomever came out of the hole in the world, the portal,  that lobotomised  Nightbeat  and turned him in to a sleeper agent.

 

Well lobotomising him is a big word, whatever they did to turn him in to a sleeper agent, also removed several cycles of his internal memory.

So the issue ends with even more mysteries and no awnsers and it's in one word: brilliant.

Other then ramping up the tension with Nightbeat, it also  is permeated with an unsettling feeling, a dark foreboding, that things are all a set up. That it's one big trap, waiting to snap shut around Nightbeat. 

It's also a great character study for Nightbeat himself.

The meticulous loner who lives for  the mystery, who narrates the whole story and it reads like a piece of hardboiled detective fiction. 

Which is pretty accurate considering Nightbeat's personality and characterisation.

Right up till the end, where he can't  shake the nagging feeling he is missing something, before getting called to earth by Prime, where we will see him in Escalation. 

 

As usual with the spotlights, even though this is just the second one, it casts a wider net and shows us that there is more to the Transformers war then just earth. That there are countless worlds at stake and that other things outside of the Transformers scope, are lurking and plotting  carrying on with their own machinations. 

And even on earth things are brewing. 

But what it also does, beyond casting a wider scope to the stories, is making  this universe feel lived in. 

There are other worlds, other planets, other civilisations. Mysteries to be uncovered and unravelled, the  first Ark is gone and nobody knows what happened to it. 

It adds verisimilitude to the IDW Transformers universe. A sense of  things having happened here and will continue to happen and we don't get to know or hear all about them, but we will get to  hear the good ones and the important ones.

This universe is alive and vast. 

Unfortunately the art lets this comic down. 

Maybe it was a rush job, maybe Bright had a murderous deadline, but the art is poor  and the murky dark coloring doesn't help much either.

For some vauge reason, half way through the comic Nightbeat changes design.

This is explained away by altering his exostructure, to fit in to Gorlam Prime.

The problem however is that  we aren't shown this. 

From one panel to another  he has a slightly different  headlamp design  and when he transforms back to robot mode again, he has suddenly lost the  side guns on his head. Until he is returned to his ship, in his  original form to off course keep up the  ruse that nothing has happened.

But we saw him transform and they were present there.

Still artistic shortcomings  (  and in some places it's just plain ugly. that Optimus Prime on the vid screen is the stuff of nightmares and early 90's comics  ) notwithstanding. 

This is a great Transformers comic  and it even stands well on its own, despite offering no resolutions, but can be considered a strong character piece for Nightbeat.  

  

The Savage Dragon 4

The Savage Dragon 4

Summary :

Dragon shows up in the house in Dekalb, where his  colleagues are waiting for him to deal with a freaking monster down in the basement.

As it turns out  the monster is a girl that's has been abandoned and left to die.

Admittedly she does look like a monster but that's all. 

At the police station Frank frets over Mildred, who has her leg in a cast after she was 'accidentally' knocked off an escalator. 

The girl, Dragon rescued is  rapidly  improving while captain Stewart  thinks she will make a perfect  addition to their little  freak force.

Dragon doesn't exactly agree with this. 

Amanda Mills pleads her case  to Dragon in person and professes her love for him.

He isn't interested. 

He is a target, everybody around him is a target. He doesnt want anymore blood on his hands of people just associating with him. 

A couple of super freaks are going at  in the underground, Dart and Dragon are send in to deal with it.

As it turns out, a huge  puss shooting zitman  is trying to choke Ricochet.

Dart  loads him up with  darts which causes him to explode in a  rain of puss, 

presumably  because the darts popped the zit. 

Dragon extends his job offer to Ricochet and Barbaric again and this time they accept.

As it turns out though, Ricochet isn't old enough yet  to be allowed on the force. 

Angrily she bounces  away. 

And we see Mrs Schwartzblatt  taking the bus to Chicago !! dun dun duuhhh !!!  

Credits :

Writer and artist : Squeeky Larsen.

Letters : Squeeky Eliopolous.

Colors : Squeeky Kohl, Squeeky Oliff, Squeeky Rude.

Editor : Squeeky Wong. 

Notes :  The credits were a joke of the people involved in the comic,

everybody was squeeky that day. 

This kick started  a proud tradition, with issue 5 that  still stands till this day. 

The last panel on the last page with Ricochet and Barbaric was rather infamous on the letter pages. 

The color of her costume and Barbaric's  arm  in the background, made it look like she had a humongous crotch. 

This issue like the one before it and after it, has a back up story which will be rounded up and reviewed  in due time.  

Review: 

The  long running, well  3 issues by now, mystery in Dekalb Illinois is  finally  resolved !

And we get to see Dart's ass again, this time on the cover.

Very  90's Image. 

But back to the story at hand, the mystery in the cellar is Horridus\Sara. 

A  girl that's at  least 18  years old and has been chained  in  the cellar by her parents all her life, because they couldn't  deal with the fact that their daughter  was a freak  ..literally. 

Eventually  guilt or remorse  or  not being able to  live anymore  like this,  led them to kill themselves, but this isn't made clear.

What is clear, is that  she  was left to die in the cellar, which is a pretty dark turn for a self proclaimed funny book. 

With some heavy  implications. After all how many children were there like Horridus,   chained in a basement  or with parents who blew their own brains out, but without  officer Dragon to rescue them ?

Speaking of Dragon he just waltzes in and takes control of the situation. 

His fellow officers come off as less good, either as  incompetent cowards or borderline  idiots, considering Sara some kind of monster.

But then again, what Chicago had to deal with before Dragon came along,  it's not unreasonable to assume they are cautious.

The long simmering, slow moving  Frank Darling subplot finally gains some traction. 

His wife Mildred  was  "accidentally" bumped off the escalator and broke her leg.

She doesn't see what the fuss is all about.

She is fine and so is the baby, but Frank and off course we know better then that.

But for  somebody who is pregnant, Mildred still has an oddly perfect figure.

Maybe she is still at the start of her first trimester. 

Captain Stewart shows his true colors in this  issue.

And he is the slimy sorts, willing to  strong arm, what  is basically a mental child, who was  raised by the TV in his little freak force.

Dragon isn't onboard with the idea, but also isn't in a position to do much  about it. 

Mary j...err Amanda Mills -who totally doesn't look like Mary Jane Par...err Watson these days,  the way Erik Larsen drew her-  also makes another appearance.

She is the woman that was held hostage in the second issue of the original mini series and this is another long simmering subplot, that  wont  go anywhere until issue 33 or so. 

This issue however is the first time she openly confronts Dragon, in an attempt to pursue him and Dragon makes it clear he isn't interested. 

He has extremely good reasons to say no, but Mrs Mills isn't convinced. This however is something we'll will get to later, much later in fact. 

She is obsessed purely because Dragon saved her. 

We also meet Ricochet and Barbaric from issue 1 again as Dragon and Dart are springing in to action. 

A huge puss spewing  zit man is trying to choke Ricochet for some reason....no seriously. 

And Dart  loads him up with so many darts, he explodes in a shower of puss  ...seriously. 

Dragon extends his offer to work for the police  again tot hem and this time they accept. 

Ricochet, as it turns out isn't old enough. What age she exactly is though, is never made clear. 

And we close off with Aunt May  ..err  Mrs Schwartzblatt,  beware  !!  

Issue 4 is all about world building, moving characters into place, introducing  or reintroducing them. 

Getting freak force going and reminding the reader this plot or that plot, is still an on going concern. 

Horridus introduction and situation has unpleasant implications, but nothing much is done with it. 

Horridus  remains mentally a child though and she is rarely able to put up much of a fight in future issues. 

Dart  and Ricochet are now both female characters, with bare legs and  wearing what is basically a thong. 

And issue 5  introduces a third female character dressed like that. 

Must be a 90's thing. 

Issue 4 isn't as strong as  issue 3. It's mostly an world building issue that gets things in to place, but it does so  with  verve and there is a strong direction in the storyline.

And a clear  indication that Larsen had an idea where he was going and hoe he wanted to get there.

Which was something that was frequently missing, from most early Image comics. 

Most of the plots brought up in issue  3 and 4  will be resolved  by issue  6 and 7  never over staying their welcome or wearing out or running out of steam.

Sometimes  the  plotlines will get short shrift, because it all goes so  fast but  this is not the case with issue 4.