Livewires #6 (of 6)

Writer: Adam Warren
Pencils: Rick Mays & Adam Warren
Inkers: Jason Martin & Norm Rapmund
Colorist: Guru EFX
Letterer: Junemoon Studios

The Livewires (Stem Cell, Hollowpoint Ninja, Gothic Lolita, Cornfed and Social Butterfly) are a covert-ops team of “nanobuilt humanform combat mecha” who have been programmed by a top-secret government R&D program to search and destroy similar top-secret government R&D programs. Programmed to put the mission above all else (including their own lives) the Livewires have found their numbers dwindling as they continue their seemingly never-ending mission. Recently the group has activated a brand-new member, the last Livewire, known as Stem Cell.

After smashing, slicing, hacking and exploding their way through several covert programs the Livewires have finally stumbled across the “White Whale”, the mother of all targets. However, the Livewires may have bitten off more than they can chew when they encountered heavy resistance while attempting to carry out their mission of sabotage. Now it’s up to Stem Cell, the least experienced member of the team, to pull the mission out of freefall. Can she over come her programmed humanity, take down the “White Whale” single-handedly and rescue her teammates? And are there any other teammates left to rescue?

Issue six of Livewires is a fittingly explosive and fast-paced conclusion to an equally explosive and fast-paced mini-series. This book is probably one of the most overlooked gems of 2005. It’s unique, action-packed, funny and at times very, very disturbing. One of the things that makes Livewires so unique is the lack of any human protagonist whatsoever. Instead you have a team of seemingly disconnected and almost completely single-minded machines (don’t call them “robots”) who carry out their mission objectives with pinpoint accuracy. The “human” element of the story is provided by the team newbie, Stem Cell, who is literally thrown into the middle of the Livewires’ chaotic, nonstop mission. She has little time to come to terms with the insanity that surrounds her, and even less time to reconcile her programmed humanity with the fact that she is a mecha created specifically to destroy.

This is the kind of stuff that writer Adam Warren excels at. Telling relentlessly fast-paced stories laced with cutting-edge gadgets and techno-babble and mixing it all together with a healthy dose of irony, wit and pop-culture bashing. Unfortunately Warren often seems to go almost as unnoticed as this mini-series. He’s one of the sharpest, cleverest writers in the biz and he’s definitely deserving (as Livewires shows) of wider recognition. He’s also one of my favorite comic artists, though he’s not the primary artist on this book.

Rick Mays, the series artist, does a passable job telling the exciting tale full of bullets, bombs and babes but I can help but think that the series would have been infinitely better served having Adam Warren illustrate as well as write the story (though he did do the series’ layouts). Mays does his level best, but in the end it almost feels like a poor substitute for the real thing. Thankfully in the last two issues we’re actually treated to several pages of story drawn by Warren himself, I assume because Mays (notorious for doing so) could not keep up with the books’ schedule. Though it’s great to see Warren’s work on the book, it also serves as a sore reminder of how much better the book could have looked had Warren just done the whole thing himself. But don’t let my slight disappointment with the artwork deter you from picking up this book. The art is still great. I’m just a much bigger fan of Warren’s art than I am of Mays’.

Hopefully Marvel will collect Livewires into a trade, but if they don’t I’m sure you can find them at your local comic book store and probably still at cover-price, or just above.


 

Special thanks go out to Jeremy Shorr, owner of Titan Comics for allowing us to use his advance preview books for review purposes.

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