Today’s Batman homage is one I really don’t know much about:
Midnighter. Midnighter aka Lucas Trent (if that’s his real name) first appeared
in Stormwatch back in 1998 for Wildstorm. He has the dark suit motif and can
kick buttloads of butt. That’s where the similarities more or less stop though.
He does have superpowers like enhanced strength, speed, and durability. He also
has the ability to know what a person is going to do before he does it. He also
normally kills his villains which is something Batman doesn’t tend to do. Lastly,
he’s known for being of the more prominent gay superheroes. For a time, he was
actually married to Apollo, a Superman homage that I looked at in September.
I did have one issue of his (Midnighter #10) that I was
going to look at but I honestly couldn’t tell what the heck was going on in it.
Seriously, I didn’t get what was going on. Instead, I found another issue that
I picked up in the cheap bins months ago. Midnighter: Armageddon #1 tied into
an event that Wildstorm was going through back in 2007. Essentially, Void from
the WildC.A.T.S. was going around to different heroes and showing them a
horrible future that they had to prevent. Christos Gage is the writer. Pencils
and inks were done by Simon Colbey.
Midnighter: Armageddon #1
Writer: Christos Gage
Artist: Simon Colbey
Colors: Wildstorm FX
Letters: Travis Lanham
Editors: Kristy Quinn and Ben Abernathy
"A Failed World"
The story starts out on the Carrier (their headquarters in
space) with Midnighter coming off from a mission. He’s about to clean the blood
from his gloves when a weakened Void shows up. She tells him that she has to
take him to a dark future. He does protest but she takes him anyway. She
teleports him to a ravaged London and Midnighter is shocked to see that the
Carrier has crashed on Earth. He demands that Void tell him what happened but
she tells him that she’s forbidden from doing so. She tells him that he only
has a short time to find out what happened and leaves.
Don't see that often.
Midnighter looks around for somebody when three superhumans attack
him. He’s able to take out two of them and threatens one of them to talk. She
tells him that the Carrier crashed on Earth years ago while a fight between
superhumans was going on. Anyone normal is dead. She tells him if he is going
to find answers, he’ll need to go in the Carrier where other superhumans are
located. He heads in and eventually finds his team, The Authority, fighting off the Bounty Hunters. Midnighter helps them out and is shocked that
Apollo has somehow gotten weaker.
His team is confused about his appearance here, but they do
say that he told them about coming to this dark future in the past. The team
tells him what happened to the Carrier and the missing members, Jenny Quarx and
The Doctor (not the Matt Smith variety either). Some incident broke out on Earth.The ship’s power
source (a baby universe?) also started to go bad, so Jenny took it to places
unknown. When the ship crashed, it caused all sorts of damage to the team and
to the world. The Doctor also disappeared because of his link to the world.
Apollo’s powers have become weakened because of this and Hawksmoor powers have
gone wonky.
Before they can tell him more, one of the Bounty Hunters
breaks one of the ship's reactors and it will explode soon. Apollo decides to
risk it all and rush it out of there. When it explodes, Void comes back and
whisks Midnighter back to the present. He tells the present team about the dark
future but they’re not too worried about it since they now know. They’ve also
faced threats like this before. Still, Midnighter is worried that they could
fail and the issue ends with him telling his doubts to Apollo.
…………………………………………………………………………….
I thought this was a decent issue. Midnighter doesn’t really
interest me that much but I know that a lot of folk like him. He feels a little
derivative to me. This may not be the best issue to introduce someone to him
but I did think it handled him well. Looking at the Authority, he really does
seem like the Batman of that team. I did like how he reacted to seeing Earth
and his teammates in this pretty messed up situation. The artwork was decent
enough. It’s not the best but it got the job done. The future scenes looked
pretty good and the art really sold the dystopian feel of it. I actually don’t
have anything too negative to say. The book does feel a little light, but
that’s how most modern issues feel at times.
Overall, this was a decent read. It does make me wonder what
happened in this Wildstorm event. I know more stuff happened after this since I
had to look up what this "Armageddon" event was about. After Flashpoint, the
Wildstorm universe was folded into the normal DC universe. Midnighter was a
part of the team Stormwatch and appeared in that book until it was cancelled.
He actually now has an ongoing series with DC and I heard it’s not bad. I’m
still not interested in the character, but you might be. Well, that’s another hero
down. I think I’m going look at a much darker character next time. Peace, God
bless, and don’t crash your interdimensional ships on Earth.
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