The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 631: Backlash #6, March 1995

Backlash's quest to restore his lady-love and defeat the Daemonite S'yrn comes to a conclusion in today's issue. With the help of his pals in Wetworks and WildC.A.T.s, Slayton corrals the warlord, gets the technology he needs, and wakes Diane from her coma. Much, of course, to the smitten Taboo's chagrin.

I am glad to see the end of this story, as it means that perhaps we'll get some more interesting, or less-canonically motivated, stories in future issues. Backlash seems to me to be one of those characters who is just dying to break away from the grittiness of his world and origins, and I would love to see the creators take a chance with him. That said, it's a comic from the early 90s, so I'm not holding out too much hope. Comics from that era surprise me only seldom.

This issue does have one of the more brutal depictions of a Daemonite execution. I know they're evil lizard-y things, and we're supposed to dislike them, but Backlash mists his way inside S'ryn, and then bursts out of him like an Alien (ironic, given what happens to Stormwatch a few years hence), ending the creature's threat. Image comics are brutal, occasionally.

I'll keep on with Backlash, at least for a few more issues. I'm curious to see where these characters go. Onward.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 630: Backlash #5, February 1995

A bit of a blip in the ongoing story of Backlash's vendetta against the Daemonite warlord S'ryn. We get a glimpse inside Slayton's mind, courtesy of a character that really reminds me of that demon that gets trapped inside a robotic shell in the first season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Also, there's a character named "Virtual Bob" in this issue, and I really hope he turns up again, because that's just amongst the most ridiculous names ever. I love it.

It is nice to see a bit of a departure, though. As I noted in yesteray's post, Backlash's story so far has been very deeply mired in the overall mythology of the Wildstorm Universe, which is not a bad thing by any means. What it means, however, is that the comic has a propensity to not offer us anything outside of that mythology, including guest appearances, both heroic and villainous. What this accomplishes for the Image U is to make it seem like it's really all about one particular story, rather than embracing the propensity of stories that can be told in a superhero universe. This is, of course, not to say that every comic Image publishes is about the same thing. I think Larsen's Savage Dragon really manages to avoid being pulled too far into the Wildstorm machinations, and thus gives us another perspective on this world. This issue of Backlash does something similar in offering a random bad guy with a sinister plan who gets completely shut down by a couple of badasses. In retrospect, maybe this insertion of another villain is simply proving to the reader how difficult the Daemonites really are to deal with if Backlash can take this guy out in a single issue.

Onward.