Team Seven #2

What is this Black Diamond Probablity nonsense? Another crossover?! Is Team Seven crossing over with All Star Western somehow?

I'm afraid to read this comic because I was pleasantly surprised to have enjoyed the first two. And yet I know this type of comic book is walking a very thin line with me. As soon as they all start mouthing off with the stupid action hero one liners and shooting fifteen thousand bullets per page, I'll turn on this thing. It'll be like the clouds suddenly cleared away from the full moon and suddenly my teeth begin growing. My jaw snap and crack and push forward. Hair will begin to darken my body. I'll be all claws and yellow eyes and desperate needs to chase bunnies. And then it'll all fall apart. I'll start cussing and bitching and calling Justin Jordan a fucking hack. I'll call Gopez's mom a whore and imply that Scott Hanna has indecent relations with people's dead grandfathers.

I'm so concerned that my attitude will shift in an instant that I used a werewolf metaphor when I had a perfectly decent Eclipso simile half-staring me right in the face! Bah! If only there were a way I could turn back time and erase what I'd written so that I could rewrite it as an Eclipso parody! Oh well! Live and learn!

At the end of last issue, Team Seven was being overrun by a bunch of Eclipsed inmates aboard Facility 9, a floating prison for super powered people. I suspect this comic will begin with a lot of shooting.

How do you identify a Hipster? By his need to call out everyone else as a Hipster. Therefore, Alex Fairchild is a hipster since I have absolutely no clue why he's calling them "zombie hipsters."

By the second page, Team Seven has said, "We only have so many bullets," twice. I think they only have so many words as well! Is Team Seven already falling apart? Do I need begin thinking of unique ways to hate this book? Hipster zombies? Repeating lines? A bunch of team members whose names I can't remember?!

What I like so far about the team is they all have slightly different personalities. I'm hoping the gulf between their identities widens as they all get more time to act. But right now, I know Alex is the hipster! And Kurt is the douche bag! And Amanda is the calm and collected know it all. And Cole Cash is the gung-ho action oriented dick in the handkerchief. And Dinah Drake is the sexy one. And Bronson is the one that can do everything that everyone else can't do and also everything that everyone else can do as well. Are those personalities different enough? Did I miss anyone? Oh! Deathstroke is the guy who feels a "Your Momma" joke coming on!

The Sexy One and The Douche Bag.

Look at fucking Kurt Lance! His hair is all moussed up and he's wearing a kerchief. I thought he had a soul patch too last issue but it looks like that didn't make it into this issue. Perhaps he lost it in the fight with the Eclipsed. I have no fucking idea what Black Canary is doing in this panel. She's fucking photo-bombing Kurt, I guess. Whatever is happening, I laughed out loud when I saw her face.

Bronson knocks out a bunch of the Eclipsed by hitting them with other Eclipsed. Then he blasts his feet rockets in their faces as he blasts back to Team Seven. But he goes out of control and smashes through a wall behind them. Meanwhile, the rest of the team poses for the camera. Except for Grifter. He was too far in the foreground, the pompous jerk. Always playing the individual!

So much going on here! The implication that Alex Fairchild is bisexual. The Spider Jerusalem guy whose name I've forgotten. Amanda Waller with an eyeball coming out of her mouth. This comic book has everything!

The team's bullets won't last forever, so they look to Waller to come up with a plan other than running. The plan she comes up with is walking very, very fast. They need to get to the comms center so they can contact Ramos the crazy pilot and evacuate the shit out of themselves. Or evacuate the shit out of Facility 9. I don't what object that verb should act upon!

When the team gets to the comm room, they find that they can't call out. But they conveniently find some footage of the experiment that caused all hell to break loose! The people running Facility 9 allowed a researcher from Arkham Asylum to experiment on their prisoners with a serum called Variant 9. It seems to be composed of Black Diamond since it turns the prisoner into an Eclipsed. And that's the basic plot! Now they can stop standing around in big groups and begin breaking up into smaller groups to find a way out and shoot a lot of shit!

Well, maybe there's a little more time to speculate on what caused the riot!

Team Seven is crossing over with All Star Western thanks to Amanda's amazing knowledge of everything ever!

Even after this little more time, they have more time even to speculate on stuff! At first I couldn't believe I would ever be interested in a comic book where everyone is firing guns at everything every panel. Now I can't fucking wait for someone to kill something! Get on with it, Team Seven! I've go 90s comic rabies!

Because Amanda has all the puzzle pieces, she realizes that the floating prison is headed toward Gamorra. I just barely remember Gamorra being some kind of terrorist super powered run island or something from the pages of Stormwatch and/or The Authority. So the Eclipsed are now a bunch of weapons being delivered to an island run by a bunch of super pricks and super assholes.

Yay for Higgins Jerusalem! Let's start shooting things in the face!

Team Seven shoots their way through a bunch more of the Eclipsed until they find the Eclipsed master. He's invulnerable to their bullets so Deathstroke tries to kill him with his sword. Guess what? Yeah, that doesn't work either, dumb dumb! The master Eclipsed grabs Dinah and calls her "a little bird" which is foreshadowing, I think? Does she become a Bird of Prey?! But then to top off the nineties tussle, Bronson comes in swinging and saying the least imaginative line he can think of!

Seriously, Bronson? Here's one off the top of my head that would have at least fit the situation even though it's chock full of horrible green cheese goodness: "It's time to bring the wane!" Oh man. I can feel myself turning into a professional comic book writer as I type!

The doctor from Arkham is still normal since the Master Eclipsed was using him to make the serum even worse than it was. But instead of doing that, he was working on a device to flash light at the Eclipsed and turn them back to normal. While Team Seven battles the Master Eclipsed, the Arkham Doctor finishes his light device and saves the day. The Master Eclipsed is turned back and Team Seven kills him anyway. Fuck him. He deserved it!

But the Eclipso event doesn't end there! This is a major crossover event here! The big twist is dropped on the final page! This is the big twist that most reviewers won't spoil because they have "no spoiler" policies. But they'll tell you detail after detail of the first nineteen pages only to leave out this last page and pretend they didn't spoil anything. Comic book reviewers are dicks.

Hey! Look at me! Shitting all over my own kind! Mmm mmm good!

Fucking Eclipso. DC has spent so much time trying to make this guy one of the toughest villains in the DC Universe but the fucker can't even go out in the sun. Loser.

Team 7 #2 Rating: No change. I still like this comic but they already had a guest artist with issue two? And while Gopez's work was passable, it didn't knock my socks off. There were too many weird drawing moments and maybe a little more explication of plot than I would have liked for my 90s Reboot comic. We need more bad one-liners that are actually enjoyable and less one-liners like "Shut up!" or "I feel a 'Your Momma' joke coming on!" To be fair, that last one was in Deathstroke #14 but I needed another example. So even though this goes against everything I believe a good comic should be, I need to offer this advice for Team Seven #3: More Fucking Guns, Bitches!