Frankenstein Agent of SHADE #6

Is the title on this cover a spoiler or a misleading statement?! Maybe it's both since it's about Col. Quantum.

The last issue of Frankenstein was a big dumb battle with OMAC. DC is trying very hard to tie all of their New 52 titles together and make sure the readers know that these are all taking place in the same universe. DC calls it "world building" but often it's just painful stories desperately trying to find any excuse to shove a guest hero into the comic book. At some point, Frankenstein will probably fight Superman. He may even go back in time to help the Demon Knights battle some Daemonites.

Thinking about Daemonites, I hope some shitty writer like Tony Daniel doesn't decide, in a future Detective Comics story, to make Gordon or Alfred into one. Don't pull that stupid bullshit, Tony Daniel.

I may have asked this before while reading Blackhawks, but how exactly do you have a covert group funded by the United Nations? Who is the group supposed to be hiding from at that point? Just rogue nations?

Ray Palmer is inspecting SHADE's humanid processing plant. The Humanids are the synthetic beings created to do all of the menial tasks in Shade City. They live for only 24 hours and are not sentient. They perform their functions by tapping into SHADE.net, the city's mainframe. Currently the city uses 8,576 at any one time. The organic matter used to create them is reprocessed into a new humanid once a humanid loses its shape after 24 hours. So it's an endless cycle of free labour using the same goo over and over again.

Seriously, Atom. It seems like the perfect opportunity for someone to introduce something like a Pinocchio Virus into the system to cause all kinds of drama.

Or perhaps just a spontaneous case of self-awareness!

A Humanid gains consciousness. Will this become Planet of the Apes where the sentient monkey leads the rest in rebellion against their arrogant masters? Will it become Blade Runner as the Humanids fight for their right to live longer than the humans have deemed they should? Perhaps it will just be the one Humanid and will be another Pinocchio story. Or will this Humanid become the Col. Quantum from the cover?! I hope he'll just be a new stowaway character that we get glimpses of as he tries to make a life for himself in Shade City without being discovered. The way that Albert lived in Mankato before Pa Ingalls took him in as his own son.

Meanwhile, the Creature Commandos are on a journey into the heart of darkness!

I recall something familiar was felt in Southeast Asia in a previous comic. Perhaps that's what they're now after.

I'll let Frank explain why they're here.

A red Doctor Manhattan.

Apparently in 1969, covert groups could stay covert? Because nobody had heard of super heroes until Superman and the Justice League came on the scene about five years prior to the New 52 stories. Frank explains that he and SHADE had been operating throughout the 20th century in total secrecy but I find that hard to believe. What's going to happen is more and more comic books in the New 52 are going to declare that super heroes were active long before Superman's coming out. And then the stories are going to have all of these heroes interacting before the world supposedly knew about them. And then Flash is going to fuck up the timeline again because Geoff Johns got drunk with Jim Lee and they brainstormed another stupid idea to reinvent everything. And the Green Lanterns will discover that there was a Corps even before the Manhunters existed. And DC will then kill off...wait, who's left to kill off? Have they killed and resurrected all of their main heroes? I think everyone in the current Justice League roster has been killed and reborn, right?

Colonel Quantum decides that the Vietnam War isn't black and white enough for his tastes so he decides to quit.

Total secrecy, hunh? The only way a reader would ever know anything in the New DCU was secret or covert was if the author explicitly tells the reader even if it doesn't match what's happening in the story.

I have a secret. I can't keep a secret. Especially when I'm told something by someone where they tell me that someone else can't know. Like I'm supposed to partition information in my head based on who can and can't know it?! At least everyone I know well knows better than to gossip to me if they don't want me blurting the wrong thing out in front of the wrong person.

The Creature Commandos have come to Vietnam to assassinate Colonel Quantum. Shade.net noted his energy signature a few issues ago. He blasted an area 50 miles across, killing thousands. I have an idea how to assassinate him! Let the Mummy use his Mummy Death Power! Or make him swallow you and then you can burst out of his atomic stomach! Or stab him in the eye!

I bet they don't end up killing him at all!

Back at Shade City, the spontaneous self-awareness of the humanids is explained.

Too bad Brother Eye got his ass cancelled!

Frank finds the temple where Colonel Quantum has taken refuge. He's now more deformed beast than human and he's been wanting but unable to die for the last 40 years. Good thing Frank showed up with his special anti-nuclear bullet!

What the hell is an anti-nuclear payload? Is it like neutralizing an acid with a base? And if so, what is it made from? My guess is candy.

The payload works and Colonel Quantum is easily dealt with. But the Humanids in Shade City have begun their revolution. The first step of their plan: release Nina from the Black Lagoon's failed experiments from the Zoo, the micro-prison within the micro-city. And the only Commandos on hand are Lady Frankenstein and Nina!

These Creature Commandos consist of the Mostly Invisible Although Slightly Yellow Man, The Yellow Beast from the Yellow Lagoon, The Yellow Blob, and Miss Porcupine Who Will Stick You and Make You Yell Ow!

Frankenstein Agent of Shade Issue #6 Rating: No change. The comic remains steady at a ranking that probably has it placed a bit higher than some other titles that I feel are actually better than it. But I suck at rating things. It's so fucking arbitrary, isn't it?