Adventures West Coast #8 : Superman/Gen13
Superman/Gen13 was a 3-issue miniseries by Adam Hughes and Lee Bermejo that I’d always known about, but never got around to actually reading. It was released near the end of Gen13‘s first heyday, at a point when I felt Wildstorm had told all of the stories about them that could be told.
For those unfamiliar with Gen13, it was originally launched as a part of Jim Lee’s Wildstorm Universe that he founded under Image. All of the titles were interconnected, as most of the heroes in WildC.A.T.S. Stormwatch, and the other teams all had ties to a Cold War era group called Team 7. Well, Gen13 were the teenage kids of the old Team 7 members. Based on experiments that Team 7 had undergone, their kids ended up with powers, and the shadowy organization behind all of it, International Operations (I/O), were desperate to get their hands on the teens.
The main Gen13 series followed Fairchild, Freefall, Burnout, Grunge, and Rainmaker as they were on the run from I/O. To say that Gen13 was quite entrenched in the culture of the 90s would be an understatement. For God’s sake, they had characters named “Grunge” and “Burnout”! Once the decade ended, it seemed that the team’s relevance went along with it. At its height, the team boasted 2 ongoings and several one-shots and minis. At the end of the ’90s, Lee sold Wildstorm to DC Comics, where the team was “retired” around 2002.
In any case, as Superman/Gen13 begins, the Gen13 team is about to set out on a “field trip”. In the original series, they have a chaperone in the form of John Lynch, a former agent of I/O who learns the error of his ways and helps the kids escape from the I/O compound. They all set up shop in La Jolla, CA (conveniently, the actual homebase for Wildstorm Studios), but he allows them to go on occasional trips to “see America”. This time, team leader Fairchild has decided that they’re going to Metropolis, much to the chagrin of the rest of the team. They gripe the entire trip, not realizing that Fairchild chose Metropolis mainly because she’s got a crush on Superman. The moment they set foot in town, they find themselves at the scene of a fight between Superman and a giant cyber ape. Fairchild runs to get a closer look, and ends up in the middle of the fight, getting knocked unconscious in the process. When she comes to, she has amnesia, her teammates are nowhere in sight, and she’s clutching Superman’s cape as a blanket. She wanders into the street, where she’s hit by an oncoming fire truck. Forgetting her own super strength, the fact that she survives, combined with the fact that she has Superman’s cape, leads her to believe she’s actually Supergirl. The next time we se her, she’s fighting crime in a Supergirl costume that she’s gotten from somewhere.
In the meantime, the other Gen13 kids have been searching for Fairchild since she got lost during the ape fight. They briefly speak to Superman, who tells them that he can be reached through his friends, in case they need any help finding her. So, the team ends up at the Daily Planet, where they meet Lois and Jimmy. Clark shows up, and everyone listens to Gen13’s account of how they lost Fairchild. While they’re doing this, they also take a few swipes at Superman, saying how they don’t want to go to him for help because they don’t want to be seen in public with him. Mainly, Superman would harsh their cool factor (they’re a ’90s concept – of course they’d say some shit like that). It’s funny because the more shit they talk, the more offended Clark is getting, but it’s not like he can say anything. Their words do seem to hit home, as he finds himself doubting his own cool factor. It wouldn’t be a ’90s Superman comic if he weren’t doubting himself. Ugh…
As the story progresses, Superman and Gen13 search for Fairchild, while she realizes that she makes a pretty shitty member of the Superman Family. Each time she tries to stop a crime or save a life, she unwittingly ends up making things worse. She shakes a kitten down from a tree, but the tree ends up falling on a townhouse. As she continues to sully Supergirl’s reputation, the real Supergirl gets fed up and decides to track her down. As Gen13 accompany Superman, they end up taking random detours to help him avert some sort of disaster. Each time they actually see him in action, another member of the team comes to truly respect him and what he does.
They end up tracking down Fairchild by visiting local costume shops. It’s a running gag in Gen13 that Fairchild’s clothes seem to rip any time she gets in a fight (see images above), so her Supergirl costumes have been getting destroyed rather frequently. Since they’re not the real deal, she’s had to replace them at the various costume shops in town. At this time, a psycho armed with a nuke comes after Superman. Once Metroplis gets wind of this, it causes mass hysteria downtown. Not only does Superman calm down the crowd, with the help of Gen13, but he also takes the nuke into space to detonate it safely. It’s this moment when the Gen13 kids realize just how badass Superman can be, and that they had been wrong about him. Supergirl finally shows up, and pissed off at Fairchild, she suckerpunches her, which results in the return of Fairchild’s memory. Before Fairchild can realize she’s in the presence of her crush, Superman flies off. On the trip home, all of the Gen13ers are comparing stories about how awesome Superman is – except Fairchild, who’s depressed that she can’t remember her time in Metroplis. When they get home, Fairchild’s mood changes, as she finds that Superman has sent her an official S cape along with a personalized note.
Superman/Gen13 is a funny story, as the primary gist of the book is to show that Superman is a timeless hero who still has a thing or two to teach the new generation of heroes. It was successful in that regard, as I’ve always seen Superman as outdated as the milkman and war bonds. The entire book, the Gen13 kids see Superman as some old-fashioned, out of touch hero, but they come to respect him in the end, as did I. What I found more glaring, however, was how much the book serves to show Gen13 as the out of touch characters. This book was written while their original series was being published, so DC apparently thought the property still had legs. To read it now, however, after countless reboots, revamps, and retcons, I realize just how much of a “flash in the pan” concept Gen13 was. The miniseries contains some of the best characterizations of the characters, but that’s the problem – even at their best, they’re still just the Best Comic of 1994. They come from the era before the bottom fell out of the market, so it’s not like there was a ton of quality there. It was a fun tongue-in-cheek series, reminiscent of the original X-Men, but with a lot more T&A and fart jokes. It made a household name (fanboy households, at least) of artist J. Scott Campbell, but can you name a more ’90s artist than Campbell or Rob Liefeld? After reading this, I feel that Gen13 currently works best in a miniseries capacity where you play them off other characters. I’d be all for Batman/Gen13, Flash/Gen13, etc. I just don’t feel there’s enough to warrant DC trying to continue them in some ongoing capacity that doesn’t work. They are just as 90s as slap bracelets and Hypercolor, but there’s nothing necessarily wrong with that. There’s a time and place for everything. I just feel that this mini marks the last time that a good Gen13 story was told.
