Alright, so I'm gonna try and keep this one a bit shorter. Tonight's review is on a four issue mini-series from DC in 1995 called Blood Pack. It sprung out of the Bloodlines event that ran through all the annuals of that year and a two issue mini-series. Basically, these alien parasites came to earth and were sucking the spinal fluid out of folks. But if those folks had the latent metagene, they got superpowers. Makes sense right? Overall it was a fairly forgettable event, but it did spawn Hitman, one of my favorite characters of all time. But, hey, I'm a DC fan who started reading around this time, so I'm curious to check out everything and anything that came out around then. Plus, I snagged them for a quarter each at a rad comic sale. So without further ado:
Blood Pack (DC, 1995)
Written by Charles Moore
Drawn by Christopher Taylor & Andy Lanning
Starring Jade, Ballistic, Sparx, Mongrel, Nightblade, Loria, Geist, Razorsharp, Superboy and the Demolition Team
Here's the basic idea: after the events of Bloodlines, a TV company sponsors a team of the parasite-spawned heroes and follows them around with cameras for a ratings bonanza. But here's the rub, the producers are really a group of people who have sold the earth out to a group of aliens who need to terraform the earth so they can live there. The producers created this team to give the people someone to look up to and trust, someone that they could control. Oh yeah, Jade (the currently deceased daughter of Alan Scott, the original, Golden Age Green Lantern) leads the team.
Not surprisingly, I liked this book. I wasn't sure how I'd feel about it, even though it is a '90s DC book and I'm a sucker for those, especially because the only name I recognized on the cover was the inker's (hey Andy, how's things?). But, even aside from my predilection for these kinds of comics, Moore really surprised me with this concept that seems to obvious now, but had never really been done before. At this time the only reality show on the block was the grand daddy of them all Real World, so it was still a relatively new phenomenon.
I was also impressed by how little I need to know about these characters ahead of time to enjoy the book. Sure, I knew Sparx from Superboy and the Ravers (a whole nother entry in and of itself), Jade from GL and even Razorsharp from the Psyba Rats, but as the four issues went on I had a pretty good idea of what the characters were about and what their powers were. Like with the Iron Man books I kind of just jumped in and figured out what I needed to know as the series progressed.
This is definitely not the type of book you'll remember for the rest of your life. I read it a couple weeks ago when I started this blog and I can't even remember all the details, but if you're a DC fan and can pick these bad boys up for about a dollar or two it might be worth a shot. Also, it makes me want a Bloodlines Omnibus of some sorts, though I highly doubt that'll happen. I've read a few of the annuals, but not many and I am gigantic fan of omnibuses, so why not dream?
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