In case you missed the announcement, I'm undertaking a goal of re-reading every issue of Gen13 for the purpose of blogging about it now that we're celebrating the 25th anniversary of its publication! Yes, I am crazy. No, I am not going to share--dig up your own insanity.
For the background of how this issue ties into the series, go check out Part 5A of this re-read.
As we saw in Issue #5 of the limited series, John Lynch quit International Operations in a spectacular fashion, and took his five teen proteges with him. As Fairchild, Burnout, Grunge, and Freefall make tracks out of California and into Oregon, they're already having difficulty getting along:
What about Rainmaker, you ask? Well, she would be with them...if she'd been involved in the story when this issue was written. Chronologically, despite taking place after Gen13 #5, this book was published to coincide with the release of Gen13 #2, and as such Rainmaker wasn't a part of the group just yet. If you want it to make sense chronologically, just assume Rainmaker flew off under her own powers to return to her tribe while the other four decided on a slightly more incognito method of transportation.
And by 'incognito', I of course mean 'stealing a van', because that's not liable to cause trouble for anyone or anything.
So, Grunge and Roxy are hungry, Burnout and Fairchild are arguing over the map, and now Burnout's making a power play to be team leader. They take a pit stop at a gas station to fuel up on both petrol and snacks, and ask directions. After confirming they are, in fact, nowhere near Milwaukie, despite Oregon being Caitlin's old stomping grounds where she used to waitress as a student, Burnout races back to tell the group about Fairchild's mistake. He doesn't get far before trouble shows up:
Someone looking for "Langston" (a name which would only be familiar to readers of Stormwatch, another Wildstorm title) teleports into the middle of downtown, uh, three-hours-from-Portland, and starts raising hell. Burnout sees her fire on the police officer confronting her, assumes she was sent by Ivana to track the group down, and decides to kick her ass.
The mysterious woman (who, it should be noted, is never named) doesn't have any idea what he's babbling about, just that he's interfering with her search for Langston, and gives Bobby a taste of her fusion blaster. Caitlin and Grunge emerge from the station just in time to see Burnout go down. Grunge hurls a can of beer (Willer Lite) at the armored woman, causing her to slip and land on her ass:
What follows is a multi-page fight scene where the woman in power armor trades blows and insults with the kids as they subject one another to escalating levels of abuse. Finally, Grunge throws her into a nearby fuel truck, Roxy drops a cigarette, and we realize scriptwriters Brandon Choi and Jim Lee have probably seen Robocop one too many times:
Finally subdued by Fairchild ripping out her armor's power cords, the Gen13 bunch hops back into their mini bus and hightails it out of there while still arguing about being lost. But don't worry: they were nice enough to leave a note for the police telling them the woman was responsible for blowing up the gas station and all the other property damage. Fairchild also took the Looney Tunes route of immobilizing the stranger with an uprooted stop sign so she couldn't fix her gear.
In all honesty, this is easily the worst issue of Gen13 yet. Part of the problem stems from it being a partial issue (it's only 28 pages, and only half of those are the actual story--the rest is a four-page interview with the book's creators, advertising, and a sketchbook showcasing some early ideas for the characters), part of the problem stems from it being maybe the 2nd or 3rd issue of the series ever written, and part of it I'm laying right on the feet of "H.K. Proger" who is so awful with words he should only be allowed to script silent films.
The art is sub-par as well. Neither Ryan Benjamin's pencils nor the techniques of the four separate inkers this short story come anywhere close to capturing the team properly. Benjamin's clearly taken lessons at Liefeld academy, as he can't draw feet to save his life. He's also over-estimated Freefall's chest by several cup sizes. Seriously, she's not that stacked, guys--why is it so damn hard for artists to capture the youthful cuteness that makes Roxy Spaulding look like Roxy Spaulding and not some thirty-five-year-old bimbo cosplaying as a teenager? Here's what I'm talking about:
Freefall's proportions are all wrong here. Her thighs and calves are way too big, her chest is too large, and her facial structure is completely out of whack. I mean, kudos on that 'breaking out of frame' pose on Grunge which does look good, but compare Freefall's arms (which are drawn properly) to her legs: she's built like a gym rat bodybuilder who only shows up for leg day.
This one is all filler, so unless you're a hardcore Image/Wildstorm collector, someone who reads Stormwatch religiously, or an idiot like myself who just has to have everything with Gen13 stamped on it, feel free to skip this one in favor of Gen13 #0 which I'll be getting to in the next installment. If you must add this to your long box, for the love of god, don't fork out the inflated asking price for the original edition, which was a Wizard exclusive that came with its own Certificate of Authenticity. Image re-printed it in 1997 as Gen13 -1 (that's "negative one"), in a smaller format which omits most of the ads and the entire interview but retains the two-page sketchbook:
The cover of -1 also confusingly includes Rainmaker on it, despite her not actually being in the story, which is about the only mistake 1/2 manages not to make.
Gen13 1/2 / Gen13 -1 is a perfect example of what made 90's comics so damn 90's. While the interview conducted with Lee, Campbell, and Choi by the staff of Wizard is a neat read, and the sketchbook pages (all two of them that there are) are nice little bonus features, the story is nothing more than the bumbling filler you might expect from a project like this. Lee and Choi clearly had a story in mind, but Proger turns in a dud of a script, and Benjamin, as previously noted, can only draw half the characters properly. Did a story this small really need four inkers working on it, guys? I mean, seriously, were the deadlines just that tight? I don't know. I'm not in the biz. I'm just a reader, a fan, an ordinary schlub who still has both books in his collection because shut up and stop looking at me like that, 
Final Rating:
out of
Thanks for reading! Make sure you drop by next time when I take a look at Gen13 #0, the other bridge-the-gap book that is actually worth reading. As always, if you see something here that you just have to add to your own collection, make sure you reach out to other members of the #comics collective. Folks like 
