In issue #6, a kid hires the heroes to find his missing robot, which was stolen by super-villains, and it turns out to be…
A Doombot! That’s funny. And I love seeing the Headmen, who are the botnappers. The Doombot cuts off Humbug’s head and blows a hole through Orka.
Yes, Orka is dead. Unceremoniously and by a Doombot.
Although the heroes are ultimately able to defeat the (surprisingly powerful) Doombot, Billy ends up being upset with them for blowing it up.
Meanwhile, the rest of the team stops a ring of diamond thieves who are really terrorists with a plan to blow up the Statue of Liberty. They’re led by Grim Reaper and Man-Ape.
Like most of the rest of this series, this story has trouble deciding whether to be funny or a straight-ahead action book. It doesn’t straddle the line as well as it could, and the tone feels a little confusing–diluting the impact of Orka’s death. There’s also a lot packed into every issue (I didn’t even mention that there’s a subplot with Paladin setting up the next arc) and a ton of characters, so the reader rarely feels any kind of narrative through-line or point-of-view. On the plus side, the ideas are good and it’s always fun to read about rarely used characters. It’s also nice to have a book that can stand on its own without a ton of reference to the (sometimes exhausting) Civil War/Initiative storyline.
English (US) · 