Dynamo 5
Dynamo 5 | |
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ISBN 1-6070-6369-7 |
Dynamo 5 is a comic book superhero team created by writer Jay Faerber and artist Mahmud A. Asrar, which appears in an eponymous series published by Image Comics. The team first appeared in Dynamo 5 #1 (Jan. 2007). The monthly series ended with issue #25 (Oct. 2009). The team later appeared in a 2010 miniseries, Dynamo 5: Sins of the Father, and the one-shot Dynamo 5 Holiday Special 2010 (Dec. 2010).
Dynamo 5 is a spin-off of Noble Causes, a previous comic book series created by Faerber set in the Image Universe, which also explores the dynamics of a superhero family.
Publication history
Dynamo 5 is a
Faerber explained that his inspiration for the series came from a conversation with editor Andy Helfer, in which he was asked what made the Teen Titans unique. When Faerber opined that the Titans were like a family, Helfer pointed out that all superhero teams could be described as such. From this, Faerber devised a team that was a biological family but did not act like it. Another influence, he said, was his parents' divorce.[1]
Artist Asrar came at the suggestion of Invincible artist Ryan Ottley. Invincible writer Robert Kirkman, whose work on that title was influential on Faerber's writing, assisted Faerber during the development stage with advice on production and marketing.[2] Asrar was the regular artist on the monthly series for its entire 25-issue run.
The team next appeared in the 2010 miniseries Dynamo 5: Sins of the Father, illustrated by Julio Brilha. It next starred in the one-shot Dynamo 5 Holiday Special 2010 (Dec. 2010).
The sequel miniseries featured crossover appearances by
A
Fictional team history
The focus of the series alternates back and forth between the private lives of each of the five team members, who maintain their separate lives in their home cities across North America, including their respective supporting casts, and their adventures as costumed superheroes.[1]
Scouring through the information she gleaned from her husband's belongings, she locates five young people she believes could be his illegitimate children:
A year after Warner assembled the team, Warner and Jennifer Chang, the mother of Visionary, are taken hostage by the team's enemies, Widowmaker, Voltage, Bonechill, Brains and Brawn, at the Aquarium, the team's underwater headquarters. Widowmaker reveals to Warner that she killed Captain Dynamo. As Warner and Jennifer Chang are rescued by Dynamo 5, the Aquarium is flooded, Warner falls into a comatose state, and Myriad is revealed to be a half-extraterrestrial, with an alien physiognomy. These events led to the dissolution of the team.[7] Although the Noble family drains and repairs the Aquarium, only Scrap decides to maintain her duties protecting Tower City, and eventually recruits other superheroes to replace her four siblings, and Augie Ford to replace Warner.[8] Scatterbrain uses his telepathy to bring Warner out of her coma, during which he learns that she is a former F.L.A.G. agent.[9] They assemble the rest of the team, and come to the rescue of Scrap and the replacement teammates, one of whom, Vigil, is revealed to be Myriad in disguise. The new team sustained serious injuries during their battle with Widowmaker and her team of mercenaries, but the villains were defeated by the combined forces of the heroes.[10]
In a 2009 storyline in issues 24 and 25 of the series, the team was attacked by their other half-sibling, the supervillain Synergy, who used a weapon to erase the team's abilities and capture them. The team freed themselves, and used the weapon to restore their powers, but they manifested different abilities than those they previously had, and took on new code names.[11]
In the 2010 miniseries Dynamo 5: Sins of the Father, the team faced off against the three sons of Dominex, a bellicose extraterrestrial who years earlier, had come to Earth to fight its most powerful champion, lest he destroy Earth. He left Earth after being narrowly defeated by Captain Dynamo,
In the one-shot Dynamo 5 Holiday Special 2010, the team confronted Lumina, the daughter of escaped supervillain convict Luminex. The story also established that Gage Reinhart and the Primary member War Chest were involved in a romantic relationship, and featured four epilogues depicting the aftereffects of Sins of the Father pertaining to the Firebirds, Sandy Colvin, and the villains Synergy and Voltage.[14]
Cast
Team members
Hector Chang / Visionary / Smasher
Hector Chang was the first of Captain Dynamo's children contacted by Maddie Warner. An intellectually curious 15-year-old[10] Vancouver, British Columbia high school geek with a history with bullies and guidance counselors, Hector, who is the youngest of the Dynamo 5 siblings, inherited his father's vision powers, which include laser vision, X-ray vision, and telescopic vision.[1][6] Visionary's mother, Jennifer Chang, eventually discovers his double-life as a superhero, and forbids him from continuing it,[15] though he does so anyway.[10] He later switches powers with Bridget, becoming the superstrong and nigh-invulnerable hero Smasher.[11]
Olivia Lewis / Slingshot / Menagerie
Spencer Bridges / Myriad / Wraith
Bridget Flynn / Scrap / Supervision
Gage Reinhart / Scatterbrain / Ramjet
Supporting characters
Maddie Warner
Madeline "Maddie" Warner is the widow of Captain Dynamo and step mother to the Dynamo 5. She assembled his five children, and acts as their leader, mentor, and "unofficial sixth member",[6] keeping in constant radio contact with them during missions from their headquarters. Although she must deal with the fact that they are constant reminders of her late husband's serial infidelity, she is insistent that they act not only as a team, but as a family as well. Despite her matronly role and demeanor with the team, she can be ruthless with enemies that she perceives to be threats, and will not hesitate to kill them. She is a former agent of the government superhuman-monitoring agency known as F.L.A.G., which she has not disclosed to the team, adding ominously in Dynamo 5 #1, "Kind of makes you wonder what else I never told them, doesn't it?" She maintains the cover of a retired reporter for a newspaper called The Journal.[20]
Augie Ford
Augie Ford, who first appeared in Dynamo 5 #2, has been an agent of F.L.A.G. for 30 years,[23] and is Warner's ex-partner. His current partner is Nicole Nakamura. Ford has long-harbored a romantic attraction to Warner, feelings which still linger. He first appears in Dynamo 5 #2, in which he pays her a visit to ask her if she is associated with this new team using her late husband's name, but she denies it. Because this visit occurs during a series of rampages by the villain Whiptail, he also tells her that F.L.A.G. is trying to reverse-engineer Whiptail's serum in order to track him by scent.
After Warner had been captured by Chrysalis and Synergy, and four members of Dynamo 5 had been captured by F.L.A.G., Augie encountered Slingshot at Warner's apartment, at which point he learned the truth of Warner's involvement with the team. Ford proposed to help Slingshot free her siblings by having her pose as a fellow F.L.A.G. agent when returning to F.L.A.G. headquarters, but when they encountered Ford's superior, Special Agent Sandy Colvin,[24] Ford turned Slingshot in. In Dynamo 5 #7, He then knocked Colvin unconscious, and helped Slingshot free her siblings, later telling Colvin that the man who attacked him must have been a disguised Myriad. Ford has continued to aid the team when possible, as when he contacted the Noble Family after Dynamo 5 rescued Warner from a hostage situation, during which she had fallen into a comatose state.[17] He served in Warner's place as the team's tactical eyes and ears until she came out of this state.[25]
Quake
Quake (whose real name is Jacob
Noble Family
Like Dynamo 5, the Noble Family is a family of superheroes created by Jay Faerber, who star in their own monthly series. Two weeks after Warner began training Dynamo 5 to act as a team, the team begins to chafe under her strict demands, and insists that they are ready for their first mission. She sends them to Tower City, where they are soundly beaten by a quintet of villains: Dr. Chaos, Battle-Axe, Slipstream, Flashpoint and Iceberg. Dynamo 5 now realize that they are not ready, and continue to train. Unbeknownst to them, the villains are actually the Noble Family, a family of superheroes whom Warner had disguised as criminals in order to convince Dynamo 5 that they needed more training.[26] The Nobles again came to Dynamo 5's aid after they rescued Warner from a hostage situation, during which he had fallen into a comatose state, by taking her to the Nobles' private island for examination.[17]
F.L.A.G.
F.L.A.G. (Foundation for Law And Government
F.L.A.G. conducts scientific experiments in a number of areas, including reverse engineering Bernard Dempsey's Whiptail serum, which turns a subject into a monstrous humanoid reptile,[20] and duplicating the effect by which Captain Dynamo and Dynamo 5 gained their superhuman abilities, which thus far resulted in the deaths of F.L.A.G's test subjects.[29] F.L.A.G. is apparently in possession of Captain Dynamo's corpse, on which they are conducting scientific research, though Ford does not know this.[31]
Despite F.L.A.G.'s conflict with Dynamo 5, a number of its agents actually appreciate the effort Dynamo 5 makes in protecting Tower City.[32]
Following Dynamo 5's defeat of Widowmaker, Slaughterhouse, Dr. Chimera, Firebreak and Optima, Scatterbrain telepathically learned the identity of the mysterious, tattooed man who had hired her, but by the time F.L.A.G. arrived at this man's office to arrest him, he had committed suicide, and although his face is still unrevealed, the tattoo on the back of his neck had disappeared, and is now sported by Augie Ford's superior, Sandy Colvin.[10]
F.L.A.G. formed their own super team in order to confront Dynamo 5, consisting of Sergeant Flagstone, the Bald Eagle, War Chest, Soldier Ant and a clone of Captain Dynamo that is controlled through telemetry by Sandy Colvin, but when they first appeared as a team in the Sins of the Father miniseries, it was to join Dynamo 5 to battle the three sons of Dominex.[13]
Firebirds
The Firebirds are Rebecca and Emily Reed,
Adversaries
The Veil
A month after the team was formed, they confronted the Veil, a paramilitary terrorist organization that attacked Tower City with numerous soldiers, tanks, and
Whiptail
Bernard Dempsey used to transform himself into a large humanoid
Chrysalis
Chrysalis is a female supervillain who wears a suit of
Synergy
Synergy (real name Cynthia), like the members of Dynamo 5, is an illegitimate child of Captain Dynamo. Her mother is Dynamo's former archenemy, Chrysalis. Dynamo was present at Synergy's birth, and even helped raise his daughter during her youth. Synergy has all five of Captain Dynamo's powers, having been exposed by her mother as a young girl to the same radiation that gave Captain Dynamo his powers. Synergy used her shapeshifting ability to pose as Captain Dynamo in order to draw out Warner and capture her. Before she can kill Warner on her mother's orders, however, Warner manages to escape by injecting herself with the Whiptail serum and transforming into Whiptail. After Warner is cured, and Synergy subdued, Warner, feeling that Synergy was not evil, but had been misguided by her mother, has Scatterbrain wipe Synergy's memories to give her complete amnesia, and leaves her in the care of a church orphanage.[37] Her memories are apparently restored by a priest named Father Gideon, after which she vows revenge on Dynamo 5.[38] After it is revealed that Father Gideon is Maddie Warner's son, Michael, who used Synergy in a scheme to get revenge on Warner for abandoning him as a child, Synergy abandons Gideon.[11]
Voltage
Voltage is a supervillain with the power to project powerful bolts of electricity from his body. He can feed off the electricity of sources like power stations in order to become stronger. In Dynamo 5's first encounter with him, is defeated by a telepathic attack from Scatterbrain. This event was inadvertently triggered when Voltage electrocuted him, and was the first time Scatterbrain discovered that his telepathy could be used as an offensive weapon.[27] Voltage joins a crew assembled by Widowmaker that take Maddie Warner and Visionary's mother hostage, but which are defeated by Dynamo 5.[39] He was later attacked by a human and two Khandrians (the extraterrestrial race to which Dynamo 5 member Spencer Bridges' mother belonged), who informed him that their research indicated that he was the biological son of Captain Dynamo, and who then stabbed him, possibly fatally.[14]
Bonechill
Bonechill is Kenneth Yaeger, a skull-faced villain caught in a
Brains and Brawn
Brains and Brawn are a supervillain duo. Brains is a high-level telepath, and Brawn possesses immense superhuman strength and invulnerability. They fought Captain Dynamo a few times before leaving their native Tower City. After the Noble family foiled a Crowne Pointe bank robbery by the two, wounding Brains in the process, the duo fled to Tower City, where Brawn is confronted by Scrap and Slingshot. During this, a comatose Scatterbrain discovers he can project his
Lionel Barstow
Lionel Bartsow is an assassin employed by high-end clients such as CEOs and heads of state,[10] with a "death touch" that allows him to kill anyone with whose bare skin he comes into physical contact. After being captured by the authorities, his attorney, Neil Lewis (the father of Olivia Lewis, aka Slingshot), advised him to testify against his former employers. His employers then kidnap Neil Lewis, blackmailing Slingshot into freeing Barstow. After Dynamo 5, who are not acquainted with Barstow's powers or his relationship to Neil's kidnappers, free Barstow, he kills his ex-employers, and reveals the truth to his rescuers. Although Livvie's siblings are outraged at learning that they freed a murderer, Livvie is more concerned with getting her father to safety than returning Barstow to the authorities,[41] a decision that serves as a source of tension among the team.[42] Livvie later finds Barstow and returns him to the authorities, despite his threat to use her secret identity as a bargaining chip with them.[10]
Widowmaker
Widowmaker is the assassin who killed Captain Dynamo. She was subsequently hired to take down Dynamo 5. Aware that she could not take on the whole team by herself, she enlists Voltage, Bonechill, Brains and Brawn to assist her. The villains take Maddie Warner and Visionary's mother hostage. They are defeated by Dynamo 5, but before escaping, Widowmaker vows to complete the contract someday. Widowmaker is a skilled martial artist who does not appear to have any superpowers.[39] She later assembles another crew of mercenaries to attack Dynamo 5, but is again defeated, and the identity of her employer is telepathically gleaned by Scatterbrain.[43]
Equipment
Dynamo 5 uses a number of highly sophisticated devices. The individual members of the team wear special watches that act as communication devices, allowing Warner to alert and assemble the team in an emergency, and keep in constant contact with them during such situations.[21] The watches also possess a function that can instantly transform the civilian clothing worn by the team members into their Dynamo 5 uniforms.[21][23]
The team is headquartered at the Aquarium, a high-tech lair underneath an industrial pier that was formerly used by Captain Dynamo.
Collected editions
Title | ISBN | Release Date | Collected material |
---|---|---|---|
Dynamo 5 Vol. 1: Post-Nuclear Family | SC: ISBN 978-1-58240-859-0
|
10/10/2007 | Dynamo 5 #1–7 |
Dynamo 5 Vol. 2: Moments of Truth | SC: ISBN 978-1-58240-954-2
|
6/18/2008 | Dynamo 5 #8–13 |
Dynamo 5 Vol. 3: Fresh Blood | SC: ISBN 978-1-60706-131-1
|
7/29/2009 | Dynamo 5 #14–19 |
Dynamo 5 Vol. 4: Change or Die | SC: ISBN 978-1-60706-182-3
|
5/11/2010 | Dynamo 5 #20–25, #0 |
Dynamo 5 Vol. 5: Sins of the Father | SC: ISBN 978-1-60706-369-8
|
5/24/2011 | Dynamo 5: Sins of the Father #1–5, Dynamo 5 Holiday Special 2010 |
See also
- The Illegitimates, a comic about the illegitimate children of a Bond-style secret agent.
References
- ^ a b c d e f g h Weiland, Jonah (December 20, 2006). "Ain't Nothing but a Family Thing: Faerber Talks Dynamo 5". Comic Book Resources.
- ^ Faerber, Jay (Sep 2009). "Under the Influence". Dynamo 5 (24): 22.
- ^ "Dynamo 5: Sins of the Father". Faerber (1). June 2010.
- ^ Wigler, Josh (June 2, 2010). "'Dynamo 5' Witness 'Sins of the Father'". ComicBookResources.com.
- ^ Image Firsts Dynamo 5 #1, Midtown Comics, accessed May 25, 2011.
- ^ a b c d e f g h Jay Faerber; Dynamo 5 #1; January 2007
- ^ Faerber, Jay. Dynamo 5 #12-14; April - June 2008, Image Comics
- ^ a b c d Faerber, Jay. Dynamo 5 #15; August 2008, Image Comics
- ^ Faerber, Jay. Dynamo 5 #17; October 2008, Image Comics
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Faerber, Jay. Dynamo 5 #19; January 2009, Image Comics
- ^ a b c d e f g Faerber, Jay. Dynamo 5 #25 (October 2009), Image Comics
- ^ a b Faerber, Jay. Dynamo 5: Sins of the Father #4 (September 2010), Image Comics
- ^ a b c Faerber, Jay. Dynamo 5: Sins of the Father #5 (October 2010), Image Comics, Image Comics
- ^ a b c d Faerber, Jay. Dynamo 5 Holiday Special 2010 (2010), Image Comics
- ^ Faerber, Jay. Dynamo 5 #8 - 10; October - January 2007
- ^ Her last name was given as "Lews" in one panel of Dynamo 5 #1, but as "Lewis" in a subsequent panel, and in all subsequent issues, such as Dynamo 5 #10.
- ^ a b c d e Faerber, Jay. Dynamo 5 #13; May 2008
- ^ a b Faerber, Jay. Dynamo 5: Sins of the Father #1 (June 2010)
- ^ a b c Faerber, Jay. Dynamo 5 #12; April 2008
- ^ a b c Faerber, Jay. Dynamo 5 #2 (Second Printing); May 2007
- ^ a b c d Faerber, Jay. Dynamo 5 #3; May 2007
- ^ Faerber, Jay. Dynamo 5 #14 - 16; June - September 2008
- ^ a b c Faerber, Jay. Dynamo 5 #4; June 2007
- ^ Colvin's last name and title was established in Dynamo 5 #25 (October 2009).
- ^ Faerber, Jay. Dynamo 5 #16 - 19; August 2008 - January 2009
- ^ a b Faerber, Jay. Dynamo 5 Annual #1; April 2008
- ^ a b c d Faerber, Jay. Dynamo 5 #5; July 2007
- ^ Faerber, Jay. Dynamo 5 #22 (June 2009)
- ^ a b c Faerber, Jay. Dynamo 5 #6; August 2007
- ^ Faerber, Jay. Dynamo 5 #5 - 7; July - September 2007
- ^ a b Faerber, Jay. Dynamo 5 #7; September 2007
- ^ Faerber, Jay. Dynamo 5 #14; June 2008.
- ^ Faerber, Jay. Dynamo 5 #21 (April 2009)
- ^ a b Faerber, Jay. Dynamo 5 #8, October 2007
- ^ Faerber, Jay. Dynamo 5 #18, October 2008
- ^ Faerber, Jay. Dynamo 5 #15; September 2008, Image Comics
- ^ a b Faerber, Jay. Dynamo 5 #3 - 7; May - September 2007, Image Comics
- ^ Faerber, Jay. Dynamo 5 #0 & 20, February 2009, Image Comics
- ^ a b c d Faerber, Jay. Dynamo 5 #11 - 12; March - April 2008, Image Comics
- ^ a b Faerber, Jay. Dynamo 5 #9; November 2007
- ^ Faerber, Jay. Dynamo 5 #10 - 11, January - March 2008, Image Comics
- ^ Faerber, Jay. Dynamo 5 #11, March 2008, Image Comics
- ^ Faerber, Jay. Dynamo 5 #18 - 19, Image Comics
- ^ The headquarters was described in Dynamo 5 #1, and was given a name in issue #5.
- ^ Scatterbrain mentions this on Page 15 of Captain Dynamo #4 (June 2007). It is given a name on Page 8 of issue #5 (July 2007).
- ^ Faerber, Jay. Dynamo 5 #10; January 2008
External links
- Dynamo 5 Home page
- Dynamo 5 at the Comic Book DB (archived from the original)