Resurrection Man #5

Probably the only Slayer song I know the lyrics to.

After Suriel, the avenging angel, kills Mitch, she panics and calls her superiors. You might think that angels have a direct line to God or the Captain Angel or whoever is in charge. But you'd have another think coming.

Do Angels use Androids, iPhones, or burners?

Suriel is in a panic because even though the demons and angels are trying to kill Mitch so that his soul can be recorded and the Everlasting Afterlife Books balanced, apparently angels can kill a person too much. Yes. That's what I said. She might have killed him dead instead of just dead dead.

Look, I didn't write it! I don't know how dead dead is any different from dead! Or how dead dead is less dead than just dead! But the problem seems to be solved if he's killed and that would mean Suriel did her job and everything worked out just fine. And you can't have that! There has to be tension and drama! So it's possible that she killed Resurrection Man in a way that destroyed his soul. Whatever she did to him, he's actually just somewhere hallucinating that he's being rushed into an emergency ward.

The scene than shifts to three years previous and a different super hero.

Guess which page is the ad and which page is from the story!

Deathstroke is outside Basra three years ago fighting terrorists. I'm sure this will make sense in a moment.

There's the connection. That's Mitch in the red jello.

Deathstroke is clearing out enemy combatants for Mitch's covert group (another Covert Group! Sponsored by the NSA and not the UN though) to safely do strange things to wounded soldiers. They're on the battlefield looking for soldiers with mortal wounds to inject with an enhanced soldier process. Not a super soldier serum! Nope! No super soldier serum here! One of Mitch's workers is a woman named Bonnie Hoffman. That's one of the Body Double girls! And one of the critically wounded soldiers they inject with the serum process is Carmen Leno, the other Body Double girl! And the red jello that Mitch is encased in is an anti-ballistic personal force shield system.

The process, Batch 1187, used on Carmen Leno was effective and began to grow back the arm she lost in battle. While transferring her from the Covert Group's secret location, things begin to explode. Mitch tries to get away in his red jello protecto-suit but it can't save him from getting his arm blown off as well! In a desperate attempt to save himself, he injects the process into his stump. Well, he doesn't do it. This guy takes the needle from him and does it for him:

"I'm Preying Mantis! Get it? PREY! With an 'E'!"

This whole origin story memory must have been the hallucination Mitch was having and he really is in the back of an ambulance somehow. His body was obliterated by Suriel in Portland. And Mitch wakes up in the back of an ambulance headed into Arkham. And the EMTs are calling him by name. How and why he ended up here will have to wait until next issue. I don't know enough about Resurrection Man to make any guesses.

Back in Portland, the Transhuman, Bonnie, and Carmen are left to wonder where Mitch is while Suriel the Angry Angel flies off to find him herself.

One final thought on the cover: yet again, another cover that depicts action that happens in a different issue. The Angel and Mitch had their confrontation last issue. And even then, Mitch had super sonic Black Canary powers and not light up flaming hands powers. So another cover that doesn't lie about the story inside; the cover actually appears on the incorrect part of the story.