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.
When last we saw our heroes, they had been betrayed by fellow gen-active Tom Hallanan, who talked them into walking back to Ivana's Death Valley compound for some revenge. The only one unwilling to follow Tom was Fairchild, who couldn't handle his callous disregard for life. Upon returning to the facility, Tom revealed himself to be (GASP!) Threshold! He disabled Freefall, Grunge, Burnout, and Rainmaker in seconds, then chucked them in the dungeons for further 'study'. Fairchild apparently has some sort of psychic link with Freefall though, as she feels the pain of her torture. This is enough to get Caitlin to grab a gun and pledge to make Threshold pay.
Just one question: what the frip-zipping diggity-whangdoodles is that monster on the cover?!
We open on Fairchild, who's doing her best Solid Snake impression:
A convoy's making its way to the I.O. facility, and they're hauling something big. Whoever's in the driver's seat must have some primo credentials too -- we don't see their face, but they've got top-level authorization to enter a locked down compound with their payload. After threatening the gate guard with a repost, they're allowed entry as the guard muses somebody better wake up Director Baiul, cuz she ain't gonna be happy about this.
Director Baiul, as it turns out, is Ivana, so we finally have a last name for the woman who's making our protagonists' lives a living hell for the last two issues. The milquetoast tasked with waking her up gets raked over the coals as she demands to know who violated her order for no one to either enter or leave the compound. We know it's not Threshold or Bliss, since they're already inside. In fact, there's only one guy we've been introduced to so far who is anywhere near Ivana's level, and that's . . .
Turns out Lynch and his Black Razor units captured another SPB (that's a 'Super-Powered Being' to you and me) skulking around Death Valley in the middle of the night. Regulations state any unidentified SPB nabbed after dark has to be taken to the closest I.O. facility to be secured until daylight transport can be arranged. Whatever Lynch and his team found (spoiler alert: it's the gray-skinned thing on the cover), it's designated Class A, which sounds pretty dangerous. Pissed though she is, Ivana knows she can't buck the rules on this one so Lynch and his group are staying, but she makes it clear if anything goes wrong, it's his head on the chopping block.
Meanwhile, Caitlin's infiltrated the facility. While the convoy has everyone's attention, she recaps the story from the last two issues in case we're the sort of sociopaths who start reading a series with issue #3. Princeton, Project Genesis, guns in the desert, she wants payback, dammit . . .
. . . and immediately fails both her Stealth and Intimidation checks.
Fortunately for Fairchild, her strength and reflexes are continually enhancing themselves, and she quickly disables both the Keeper and the Black Razor trooper. The Keeper's face-plate breaks in the fight, but the Black Razor troop's suit is still intact, which gives her an idea.
Cut to Lynch and Ivana watching Threshold work over the prisoners via closed circuit camera. All four have been stripped naked. Burnout's chilling in a one-person liquid-filled chamber to prevent him from flaring up. Freefall and Rainmaker are each fitted with power-dampening shackles. Grunge is suspended from the ceiling, upside down, arms manacled and subjected to increasingly harsh power blasts from Threshold, who doesn't understand why Grunge hasn't manifested any ability beyond a greater-than-average amount of body hair.
Lynch thinks Ivana's being too harsh. They're only kids, after all. Ivana, on the other hand, thinks Lynch has gone soft, and could learn something from Threshold who, she remarks, reminds her of Lynch in his younger days. Lynch counters: while both of them have done terrible things, he never enjoyed it the way Threshold does.
Elsewhere elsewhere, we meet Timmy:
Captured by I.O. and taken to Project Genesis, it's believed Timmy could be an SPB. He's also just a child, and despite Ivana making every effort to make him feel right at home (everything from Beavis & Butthead on the television to a poster of Barney on the wall, a Sega Genesis console, huge teddy bear, and big comfy bed), it's not working.
Don't worry though: Timmy won't be here very long, because Luke Skywalker Caitlin Fairchild is here to rescue him!
"Errrr . . . what's that? 'Star Wars'? No, never heard of it." -- J. Lee, B. Choi, & J.S. Campbell (probably)
Because taking a terrified child along with you is what all the best stealth operatives do, Fairchild takes little Timmy from his room and continues her sneak-a-thon through I.O.'s basement, where she spies Bliss. The deranged nymphomaniac is toying with the giant creature brought in by Lynch and his Black Razors, using her psychic powers to dangle the key to his cage within grabbing distance, then yanking it away. Probably not the best idea to mess around with a creature who looks like it could give the Incredible Hulk pointers on bodybuilding technique, but nobody ever said Bliss was the smartest french fry in the Happy Meal.
Since it's pretty much impossible to sneak by a psychic (and since she ditched the Black Razor helmet for some reason), Bliss senses Caitlin and Timmy behind her, turns, and unleashes a hellacious blast of psionic energy at the pair. Fairchild uses herself as a human shield, which shreds the Black Razor armor, but doesn't block the whole attack, and Timmy's blown off his feet. As he crashes against the wall, he screams one word:
"PIIIITTT!"
Time to turn the comic sideways for a nice Liefeldian two-page spread, kids:
Pitt is a totally-not-the-Hulk analog created by Dale Keown, and is the star of his own Image book. I won't get into Pitt's back story, since it's not important. Just know that Pitt is Timmy's own guardian . . . uh . . . angel? demon? alien? with two separate consciousnesses inside his brain. Dude argues with himself a lot.
As an aside, does anyone else find it uncanny that Lynch's Black Razor team was able to capture and contain a monstrosity like Pitt without problems, yet a few newly-minted Gen-active teenagers cause them no end of trouble every time they tangle? No? Just me? OK, then. Moving on.
Pitt snaps his restraints and blows through the wall. Bliss freaks out, calls an alarm and seals the containment doors, trapping Pitt on that level of the facility. Meanwhile, Fairchild sits up after Bliss's brain-scrambling and costume-ripping mental assault, sees an enormous gray brute hunched over Timmy, and assumes the worst.
Cue SPB Monday Night Smackdown as the pair trade blows.
For a moment, it seems like Fairchild has what it takes to go toe-to-toe with 'Roid Raging Marshmallow Man . . . but only for a moment. Pitt scoops her up by the neck, squeezing the breath out of her. It would have all ended there, except Pitt makes one chauvinistic mistake:
TRIGGER WARNING! ALL MALE READERS BRACE FOR IMPACT!
Caitlin, moonlighting for Tractor Supply, sets Pitt up with his own couple of acres, and the brawl-a-thon continues.
Meanwhile, back in Threshold land, Matt's getting tired of Grunge being so normal, and decides to give him one last chance to manifest his powers with a blast that will either activate him or burn him alive. Freefall, enraged, screams at Threshold that she'll kill him, and Threshold releases Grunge and turns his attention on Freefall, levitating her with a thought and slapping an electrical noose around her neck.
Finally, finally, Grunge has had enough of these muthafuckin' snakes on this muthafukin' plane Threshold's nonsense, and the attack on Roxy is enough to uncork a can of 5'4" naked teenage whoopass. Grunge bursts his restraints and lays out Threshold with one Kool-Aid Man-approved punch from a suddenly-metallic arm:
So much for all that 'training with the masters' shtick from issue #1, eh, Threshold?
Roxy and Grunge share a tender moment, where she gushes over his White Knight routine, and there's some awkward naked hugging while Grunge explains he'd have done the same for any ol' homeslice. Thankfully everyone gets back into their clothing so Campbell doesn't have to keep coming up with new ways to draw naked people in positions designed to appeal to the Comics Code Authority.
Back in operations, Lynch and Ivana listen as an underling reports it's all-out war up there, with someone smashing its way down into successively lower and lower levels of the complex. Ivana and her crew are all hanging out down in sub-basement ten, when the ceiling above them gives way. In drop Fairchild and Pitt, making that time the Undertaker threw Mick Foley through the roof of the Hell in a Cell cage look like a backyard wrestling outtake.
The pair pause their battle long enough to take stock of the dozens of weapons trained on them, Pitt realizes he and Fairchild are on the same side, Ivana orders Lynch to clean up the mess, Lynch orders his men to lock and load, and we all remember the cliffhanger ending of Star Trek: The Next Generation Season Three, right?
I hated this issue the first time I read it.
Image was known for playing crossover games with their properties that made Everette Hartsoe's Razor-verse look pedestrian by comparison. Finally we get this brand new series, with all new characters, which doesn't require prior knowledge of other Image titles, and by issue #3 they've already started playing the crossover game.
The thing is, my annoyance at this issue's storyline was only due to my unfamiliarity with the material. Once I dug in further, did a bit of research, learned about Pitt and his connection to Timmy (and once I realized Lynch had plenty of backstory baggage from previous Wildstorm titles), I grew to grudgingly admire what this issue actually did. In fact, issue 3 gets a lot better once you can read it in tandem with issue 4. Stilll, if this is only your third experience with a Wildstorm book, it's kind of a mess.
Having Campbell join Lee and Choi on the writing side is a case of too many cooks in the kitchen. The story is filled to the brim with clichés and tropes that were old even by 1994 standards, and if there's one thing I hate more than anything else, it's the crossover characters misunderstanding one another and getting into a brawl, only to realize halfway through they were on the same side all along. It's the hackiest of hackneyed story ideas, and the bottom of the barrel in terms of writer creativity, right up there with the, "...and they woke up to discover it was all a dream!" ending. These things have their places, and in the hands of a good writer, they can work (Adam Warren, in fact, will use the "...it's just a dream" trope in a much later issue to humorous effect). But even with Choi, Lee, and Campbell all working together, this is more MegaMess than MegaZord. Jeff Mariotte's dialog from last issue is sorely missed.
That said, if you were looking for a great brawl, this issue doesn't disappoint. There's been action in the series so far, but Fairchild and Pitt's take on the "Hell In A Cell" match is its first knock-down, drag-out fight. It's something the series has really needed: up to this point, fights have been so one-sided as to make 
Outside the story, this issue also features a nice pinup centerfold of the Gen 13 team by Dan Norton and Chuck Gibson. The letter column also gets its name (Talkin' 'Bout My GEN-eration) courtesy of both The Who and Tyson Marshall of Springville, Utah who suggested it first.
Jeff Mariotte is back on the letters page this issue, explaining the original four-issue miniseries has been expanded to five, because there's just too much story they want to tell, so that's cool. The cut-out coupon in the back of this book also amends the rules to allow photocopies of the coupon from issue #1 (presumably because chopping it out meant losing the last page of story, instead of sacrificing an ad or page from the letters column), so . . . sorry if you already mutilated your book. Just buy another copy -- it's only two bucks, ya know, and some day it'll be worth enough on its own to put your kid through college, right?
Oh well . . . maybe in another thirty years.
Also, take a look at the copyright page. Dale Keown, I shit you not, managed to trademark the name 'Timmy'.
I give Gen 13 #3 a rating of...
out of
Sure, we finally get Grunge manifesting more than a raging stupidity, and Fairchild holding her own against a monster twice her size and three times her weight, but there's just not a lot of 'there' there. Without issue 4 backing it up, this would have merited only two
See you next time for issue #4, where we'll finally have all five super-powered youth present from page one...and hopefully some better dialog to go along with it.