“Yesterday’s” Comic> Prime #3

The current state of superhero stories.

Prime #3

Malibu Comics/Ultraverse (August, 1993)

“Dead Again…And Again!”

WRITERS: Len Strazewski & Gerald Jones

ARTIST: Norm Breyfogle

COLORIST: Keith Conroy

LETTERER: Tim Eldred

EDITOR: Chris Ulm

At last, the origin of Prime, the result of an experiment to clone new soldiers through human beings. The experiment did not go as planned, so Kevin just creates a new body around his old one. So does one of the mad scientist’s other creations, as one of the assistants is Organism 8, one of the early experiments. They battle, the scientist (did I miss his name somewhere in these three issues? I thought he was a government agent, not a government scientist) wanting more samples of Prime’s shell body. Prime eventually manages to defeat the monster by tossing him into the computers, the explosion hurting the scientist and allowing Prime to escape. Turns out the assistant is the scientist’s son, Duey. Not wanting to lay this on his parents (though his father clearly knows something), Prime seeks out the hero Hardcase…but ends up ruining Prototype’s movie shoot instead.

What they got right: We have an origin story, or at least the origin of Prime’s powers, not how Kevin got into this. That’s a future mystery but at least we finally have a starting point. There’s some good action and some idea what Prime’s adventures are going to be like, if this is his arch enemy. I finally looked up the doc’s name, Doctor Gross. Seems appropriate given his experiments.

What they got wrong: Is it too early for a crossover story, even in a shared universe like this? It does make sense that Kevin would turn to another Ultra hero, but why bring Prototype into the story instead of actually being Hardcase? Were they setting up Ultraforce already?

What I think overall: This story has my attention. Whether or not it will be any good we have yet to see, but I’m willing to give this a further shot.