Michael's Long Box - Atomik ANGELS #2 (1996, Crusade Comics)

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You didn't think it was over, did you?

Oh hell no. When @angry0historian, @cryplectibles, and @bryan-imhoff all go out of their way to point out there were three more issues of Atomik ANGELS produced, the writing's on the wall. They expect more. They deserve more.

They shall have it.

Coming at you live from twenty-one years ago, when the 90's were in full swing and anybody could publish a book with even the sketchiest premise, I give you Atomik ANGELS #2, brought to you by the same gang who brought us Atomik ANGELS #1, but on a smaller budget, and by 'smaller budget', I mean 'their license for Freefall's cameo was not renewed'.

Slip that Alice in Chains CD into your Discman, press play, and...

Source: TeePublic

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Well, they managed to get the indicia page in the right place this time around. It's on the inside cover instead of tucked away at the back of the issue like everyone involved was ashamed the way it was with issue 1. I'll be generous and award two points for this, since it was clearly an uphill battle to figure this out from the start.

I then get to immediately deduct five points because scriptwriter Peter Gutierrez insists on continuing to open the issue with an infodump of text. Only this time, instead of being in an easy to read typeset font, he's gone full-blown artiste and opted for two squished diary pages at an angle, using an awful handwriting font. Reading this was a chore twenty years ago--not much has changed:

This might be nitpicking, but is it too much to ask for the letterer to align the bloody handwriting with the lines on the paper? I mean, I know this is a diary and nobody's grading it, but who writes like this? If your intent is to show me that Carpenter's a sloppy sort, then you need a sloppier-looking handwriting font to convey this. Nobody that precise with his letters is going to half-ass them across the page like a preschooler.

As I said in the review for the first issue, the writing here is good. Gutierrez has no problem producing decent prose, but a comic book is not the place for this. Present your back-story throughout the story in ways relevant to the plot, not in giant text boxes devoid of action.

That said, the next two pages get it right. There's usually a small recap between issues, especially if it's been more than a month between releases, but to my surprise, Gutierrez and crew pull this off perfectly:

There are a million ham-handed ways to handle a recap, but this isn't one of them: this TV News-style presentation works by giving us thumbnail sketches of what's going down: terrorist group has seized the Empire State Building, they claim to have a cache of Sarin gas (the same shit the Aum Shinrikyo cult released in the Tokyo subway system just one year before this issue's release), we see the dead bodies of the 'hostages', and the chaos of the current evacuation. We get 9 simple panels with minimal text and visual aids, and in one page we've recapped the relevant story bits from last issue.

Unfortunately from there, it's back to the chaos and face-palming as the extreme teens motorbike their way on custom Bimota Italian motorcycles (product placement: it's not just for movies!) through a secret tunnel system under the streets of New York, built by discount-Nick-Fury and his crew so their ANGELS can get anywhere without worrying about a traffic jam. I'd buy this a lot easier if part of their journey across town didn't involve ramping the tracks in front of an oncoming subway.

If your super hero team needs to very urgently get somewhere to save the world, maybe it's best to provide them with a way to do so that doesn't have a chance of pancaking them on the way. To be fair, if that train was going just a bit faster it would have taken out Stag and made the story much more tolerable for modern-day readers. Oh, what might have been.

Naturally, they argue the whole way there, because teenagers.

Upon arriving at the checkpoint, the ANGELS ascent a ladder out of the sewer and into a waiting ambulance where they have less than a minute to remove their armor and don their disguises as paramedics. Why bother having them put it on at the beginning if their first mission objective will be to disrobe? I've no idea. And are you telling me three attractive young women like DC, Zoo, and Sasha are all willing to drop trou in Stag's company? I'd trust this promise over anything Stag could cough out of his surfer-bro mouth:

Maybe they bound and gagged him for the trip over, I dunno. Whatever.

So they reach the scene, bust out of the ambulance, and head for the Empire State Building. Lennox has apparently allowed for a medical team to come in and check on the hostages to assure they're being well-treated.

Wait, what?

Lennox is convincing these people to literally take a long walk off a short pier, the outside world believes he's throwing them out of windows...why the hell would be go along with such a request? Granted, the hostages are all terminal cancer patients who have only a short time left on this world anyway, but why should he give a shit? They could be in the peak of physical health and it wouldn't matter: they're hostages who, by all available information, look like they're being executed one by one, hour by hour, until his demands are met. What are the paramedics supposed to do, make sure none of them have high blood pressure? Hans Gruber would instantly suspect any attempt at medical intervention to be a move against his position; Lennox apparently wants people to believe he's reasonable, but after tossing at least three people to their deaths, there's no card left in your 'Deck of Terrorist Plots' that lets you retake the 'reasonable' high ground.

My face hurts.

We switch to the hostages for a couple pages. It's Kenneth's turn, but he's having second thoughts about offing himself to enhance Lennox's agenda. Sure, he's going to die anyway, but compared with becoming pavement pizza, expiring in a hospital with pain medication at hand suddenly starts looking more reasonable. He chickens out, Lennox throws a fit, and demands somebody else step in to fill his shoes while Kenny builds up his courage. Can't throw off our time tables here, guys: someone not flying off the building at 1:30 makes us look incompetent after all. Well, more incompetent, at any rate.

Back to the ANGELS:

All right, color me impressed. They stripped out of their clothes and armor, and donned EMT uniforms consisting of dress pants, button-up shirts, belts, and oxygen tanks in under a minute. That takes serious skill. Some mornings it takes a full minute just to put on my underwear. I just realized I've never showed all the ANGELS in one panel before, so from left to right, that's Zoo, Stag, Sasha, and D.C. Just in case you care about this more than I do.

The ANGELS enter the building, only to be greeted by one of the hostages, who frisks them for weapons, then requests to be tied back up instead of running away, warning that "they're listening". This is enough to encourage paranoia from the team. One of them (it's not clear who) states it was crafty to send a hostage to greet them, which in their minds marks the terrorists as pros. Um, guys, professional terrorists would not fall for the old 'we just want to send doctors in to check on the hostages' ploy. Geezus, when I'm the smartest guy in the room, you know there's a problem.

More in-fighting occurs when Sasha splits the team up: she and D.C. go one way, Zoo and Stag go the other. Turns out Zoo and Sasha are the only ones with any kind of medical training, so to keep up the ruse, one person on the team should at least have a clue what they're doing.

Zoo and Stag arrive on the 30th floor just in time to save Kenneth...by jumping out the window with him, which causes Zoo to comment she's about to find out how indestructible she really is. Wait a minute: if Zoo (and presumably the rest of the ANGELS) are virtually indestructible without their armor, then what purpose does the armor serve?!

I sense a looming shortage of face-palms.

Meanwhile back at the U.S.S. Intrepid, one of the scientists blows a gasket because Sharkey sent the team in before they could be tested. Sharkey plays the 'your input is duly noted' card all leaders-who-incorrectly-assume-they-are-a-badass play in stories like this, only to get shot down by the doctor reminding Sharkey it's a secret project and he's done too little to hide their identities:

Good job, Discount Nick Fury: somebody's high-ranking daddy recognized his little sweetheart in the middle of all the chaos on TV, and he's going to pull the plug on the operation. Does Sharkey know the first goddamn thing about keeping secrets, or is he just one of those managerial types who rises to the level of his incompetence?

Back to D.C. and Sasha, who've discovered more hostages. When it becomes obvious D.C. has about as much medical training as your average badger, the hostages figure out the gig is up and rise against their savior en masse. Apparently D.C. was never a Girl Scout, a lifeguard, or awake in her high school Health class. While Sasha deals with the plan to release their own gas in the building to neutralize the terrorists, D.C. is forced to open up a can of whoop-ass on the strangely-combative hostages. A bunch of ordinary, untrained humans against an ANGEL should make for a short fight, and it does...but not for the reason you might think:

So, let me get this straight: Zoo takes a multi-story fall where she has to land first in order to take the brunt of the impact and protect Kenneth without so much as a bruise, but somebody with a mop handle cold-cocks D.C., a supposedly-trained fighter invulnerable enough to shake off the effects of a nuclear blast, in seconds. There's pissing on continuity, and there's pissing on continuity, if you know what I mean.

Can one of you pick up this face-palm for me? My forehead's bruising, and it's about to get worse.

See, while D.C.'s busy getting her ass kicked by a bunch of out-of-shape terminal cancer patients, Sasha's got the most vital part of the mission to complete: deposit the gas into the buildings ventilation system and wait for everybody to go sleepy-bye. Unfortunately she finds two potential shafts, both unmarked, and the building plans she has don't account for two shafts, so she's got a choice to make.

Wait, wait, wait! The building plans don't account for two shafts? That means the second shaft must have been installed after the building was constructed...but as we see, one of these shafts leads to a trash incinerator. Also, this isn't just any building in New York City, this is the Empire Goddamn State Building. You cannot just secretly install an incinerator at One Grand Central Plaza post-construction. If one is there, it would be in the building plans. Also, spoiler alert, the Empire State Building doesn't contain a trash incinerator. A trash compactor, yes. Incinerator, no. I know, I know, fictional comic book is fictional, but geezus!

Three guesses as to which chute Sasha drops her fake oxygen tank into, and the first two don't count.

Well, that big explosion put a damper on Zoo and Stag's day, so they need to race up to the 50th floor, on foot, via the stairs. Hope they've kept up on their cardio.

Sharkey calls to find out what the explosion was, so Sasha explains everything and ha ha ha I kid, I kid. Sasha lies her ass off, displaying one of the key traits of team leadership she'll need to maintain morale in high-stress situations. On the assumption their cover is blown (what was your first clue, dude?) Sharkey fires an impact-resistant crate containing the ANGELS armor to them via cannon, and the group suits up with their rocket boots and decides the best course of action is a direct strike on the observation deck on the odds it's the last thing the terrorists will suspect.

Folks, listen to me very carefully: terrorists always plan for a direct strike on their position. It's literally the first thing for which they form contingency plans because it's the most obvious angle to cover. If ever you find yourself tasked with attacking a bunch of terrorists holed up in a secure location, don't be the Atomik ANGELS.

Anyway, teens to the rescue!

...Er...or not? Stag's still recovering from that hangover, and wimps out just when he's needed most. And rather than doing the sensible thing and stopping to check that 1/4th of their firepower is OK despite keeling over nearly unconscious mid-flight and dangling from a fence, Sasha orders her team to proceed with the mission, because Lennox is right there. Finally, we're about to get the butt-kicking action we've been waiting on since last issue. I can't wait to see the fully-powered ANGELS get medieval on this guy's--

Oh for fuck's sake, the guy's hard-wired to a nuke. Of course it is.

We end the current arc with a promise (make that a threat) the action will continue in sixty days' time. Apparently they had enough readers interested in this mess to make production of the next two issues a thing. The comic concludes with five pages of ads for other Crusade comics, a re-print of Ian M. Feller's quote from Combo Magazine, and an editorial by the book's new editor Marc Patten, who explains that former editor Brian David-Marshall got as far away from Atomik ANGELS as was humanly possible. Given the clusterfuck that was issue #1, I think he made the right choice. How about you?

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Atomik ANGELS #2 continues to display the complete absurdity that everyone associates with funny books printed in the 1990's. It learns from some of its mistakes in the first issue, but fails so spectacularly on the story-telling front I almost feel bad ragging on it.

Almost.

We're now halfway through this nightmare. Can you possibly stand the wait until we get to part 3? Don't worry--unlike Crusade, I won't make you wait two whole months. The US Constitution forbids the inflicting of cruel and unusual punishment, and making my readers contemplate what's to come next for the personification of why teenagers should not be trusted to fight terrorists for sixty days falls into that category for sure.

Please place all praise and pleas for mercy in the comments below. Direct all flames, anger, and promises of horrifying torture to @angry0historian for encouraging me.