"Love is All That Anti-Matters, Part One: No Weddings and a Funeral"
Cover Date: January 1998
Writer: Steve Matheson and Karl Kesel
Artist: John Hood (Pencils), Dan Davis (Inker)
Previously...
Well, someone thought 'Superboy and the Ravers' was a good title for a comic book. That was a pretty shocking twist.
Plot
In the anti-matter universe of Qward, Kindred Grim is trying to marry Kindred Sol in order to unite their energies, which would make him super-powerful, which will then allow him to merge Qward with the regular universe, which is evidently very good for him, and very bad for everyone else. He's hired recurring villains 'Red Shift' in order to assist him.
Back in the regular universe, Kindred Marx, Grim's brother, is explaining to Superboy that they need to rescue Sol or else everyone's fucked. Marx, you see, knows Superboy because he owns the titular rave, that's right, the team is headquartered at some sort of permanent rave hosted by an alien. I can only assume this issue was meant to read with the aid of several tabs of ecstasy. Anyway, Superboy declares Sol to be 'Da Bomb in purple leotards.' Huh, with dialogue like that, I'm not sure the universe ought to be saved.
Meanwhile, in Canada, Sparx tells her grandmother that she doesn't want to ever go back to the rave because she thinks Superboy has eyes for someone else, and her jealousy is killing her. Sparx's grandmother explains that if she doesn't go back, people are going to die. (Note: after re-reading the comic, I found out that Sparx was actually have trouble with the fact that Hero was gay, which apparently really bothered. Which isn't a bad idea for a subplot in and of itself, I guess, except, you know, they're based at a rave, which kind of makes you wonder how the fuck Sparx lasted more than five minutes there if she was that offended by gay people. Oh, and Hero's love interest is named Leander after the myth, which did not end well for either character.)
Back at the Rave, the imaginatively-named 'Hero' is looking with fellow Raver Half-Life for another Raver named 'Kaliber'. Ah, the '90s, when you could non-ironically name a character 'Kaliber'. Anyway, they don't find him, and Superboy and Marx show up to explain that the need to stop that wedding from taking place. Rex the Wonder Dog shows up to help them Sol since the dog is 'saturated with [Sol's] essence' and so can lead them there. Somehow I don't think the guy from mightygodking.com is ever going to use panels from this issue on his blog. They all head to Qward.
And, in fact, that's where Kaliber has been this entire time. It turns out that he's gone permanently blind due to something happening in a prior issue that I don't care to read.
But, before we going any further with that, a team member named 'Lindsey' is beating up her father for killing her number. Just as she's about to finish him off, he begs her to stop so he can explain why he killed Lindsay's mother. He then explains that he killed her because she had super-powers, and therefore needed to be killed, much like Lindsey herself. Well, I'll give the dude credit, he's got stones.
Back to Qward, everyone else is looking for Kaliber and Sol, which doesn't take them very long. Red Shift then attacks in a fight scene that has exactly zero characters I care about. Half-Life then blows himself up to take out a whole bunch of enemies, and his fate is the issue's cliffhanger. To Be Continued!
Next Issue
Half-Life is totally dead.
Commentary
First of all, the 'Ravers'? I mean, I guess I've got to give Karl Kesel credit for actually trying to make the name meaningful, but, well, the name still sucks.
Anyway, this isn't a very good book. From a purely plot-based view, it sucks because the first two-thirds of the book involves the Ravers just kind of milling about, not accomplishing much of anything until Rex the Wonder Dog shows up and magically gives them the information they need to move forward with the plot.
Beyond that, it's just kind of a mediocre book. I mean, the dialogue is occasionally funny in an unintentional way, but that's only because no DC comic has ever featured a teenage super-hero who sounds like an actual teenager. Fuck, even when Jim Shooter was writing the Legion when he was a teenager it didn't sound natural.
All in all, another book designed to fill the gap of 'Teenage super-group' that had existed in the DC universe that had existed since the Teen Titans stopped being teenagers around 1987. Incidentally, I'm not sure that they really ever have. When Superboy and the Ravers got axed, they then launched new versions of Titans, as well as starting up Young Justice, but that version of the Titans wasn't very good, and Young Justice really only appealed to fans of Peter David, so they eventually tried again with the Geoff Johns' Teen Titans, which really wasn't much better. It's kind of interesting because ever since the Wolfman/Perez run became such a big hit, DC has seemed determined to keep trying to make a team that will recapture that magic, with pretty shitty results.
Damage Stars ****
Bonus
Who were the Ravers?
Superboy- the clone of Superman and Lex Luthor who has been reinvented, like clockwork, every five years.
Hero Cruz- a gay Latino who taught us all that sexuality and race are no real barriers to starring in a terrible team book.
Kaliber- a renegade Qwardian who filled the stoic alien warrior cliche.
Sparx- a repressed Canadian girl who has electrical powers.
Aura- the character I kept referring to as 'Lindsey' up above. Some sort of magnetic powers, I guess?
Half-Life- a teenager from the '50s whose family and girlfriend got killed in an alien-related incident that turned him into some sort of shambling half-dead grotesque.
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