“Yesterday’s” Comic> Exiles #4

I’d run from this comic, too, if I were her.

Exiles #4

Malibu Comics/Ultraverse (November, 1993)

“Fatal Flaws”

WRITER: Steve Gerber

PENCILER: R.R. Philips

INKER: Dave Simons

COLOR DESIGNER: Robert Alvord

INTERIOR COLORS: Psychedelic Prisms, with the most annoying credit I’ve had to put up with. Why is it in a rainbow color, making it harder to read than every other credit on the page?

LETTERER: Patrick Owsley

EDITOR: Chris Ulm

You ever felt satisfied by a comic ending for the wrong reasons? That’s me and Exiles, and not because the comic opens on a splash page of A SEVENTEEN YEAR OLD GIRL IN THE SHOWER WITH ONLY STEAM AND WATER TO COVER HER PRIVATES!!!!! What the hell? Frank Miller would tell you to dial it back! Amber decides to turn on the machine herself, worried that she’s about to drop dead any second. Nice work, Doc. You have the still illegal girl (a reminder if you check out that page) so scared that she activates an experiment she knows nothing about to save her life. Meanwhile, Judd thinks it’s the right time to kiss Heather, believing now is the right time to express that he’s interested in her as well, but in the wrong way so she punches him dead in the face. On the one had, she does like him, on the other his approach was totally wrong, which he admits is because he has issues expressing himself to people. While I can relate…that’s just wrong, man! You should know better. We’ll never find out what he means by “when I’m a man”, because Amber activated that machine without anyone watching, Heather wanting to wait for the doctor. We’ll get back to that…but Heather and Judd won’t. Never even get to see what they can do.

Back at villain HQ, Ghoul uses his powers to contact Tinsel’s spirit to find out who killed her. She offers something to help him gain his legs back, but he turns it down, and hunts down the still blinded Bloodbath. Waiting in his room, Ghoul kills him after taking a lot of blades and bullets from the blind but still able to shoot Bloodbath, then takes that thing from him instead, his spirit. Now fully restored (by zombie standards), Ghoul attacks the villains, blowing up the headquarters and killing everyone in the process. I only know he survived because he appears later as part of Ultraforce. Everyone else? Dead.

Our “heroes” manage to escape the police but fail to track the kid down before being called back home…just in time to join Heather and Judd in death as the hero base explodes. Hope someone else knows about treating that virus, or that whole plot was just pointless. Actually, this whole comic is pointless. Everybody dies except for two scarred and scared teenagers and possibly the guy whose already undead to begin with. I didn’t like any of these characters, I’m not sorry to see them dead, and I’m not sorry this miniseries is over. I don’t know how “essential” this miniseries really was, but I’m so glad I’ll never have to read it again!