“Dude, you’re ruining the cover scan glowing like that.”
Prototype #12
Malibu Comics/Ultraverse (July, 1994)
“Assault On The Dark Tower”
WRITERS: Len Strazewski & Tom Mason
PENCILER: Roger Robinson
INKERS: Scott Reed, Tom Florimonte, Larry Welch, & Tim Roddick
COLORING: Keith Conroy & Violent Hues
LETTERER: Susan Dorne
EDITOR: Roland Mann
With Felicia’s help. Bob in his Ranger armor and Jimmy (I wonder if he’s going to get a new hero name?) infiltrate the lab to get Jimmy’s suit. The temp outfit Felicia made for him isn’t controlling his ultra overload energy as much as the suit can. They’re attacked by Jones in the Prototype III armor. Ranger keeps him busy while Jimmy gets into the Prototype II armor and joins the battle, Jones being no match for both heroes. Then they pay a visit to Leland, with Felicia settling a personal score with Marjorie, the “organic prototype”. Out of options, Leland breaks out “Prototype 2000”, a robot that’s responsible for Bob’s losing an arm…except the robot blasts Leland instead, now in control of Gordon Bell, the Ultratech chairman.
Shorter review here because this is just one big power armor battle…and as a fan of armored heroes I am so here for this. We get character insight, action, cool armor, a lot of fighting…this is what I love about the armored superhero comics. There’s even a quick nod to Iron Man, with Bob mentioning he likes taking off his “powers” and putting them into a briefcase. While not all the stories are wrapped up, I could believe next issue was going to be an epilogue to the series if there wasn’t 18 issues.
In short, while this couldn’t be the whole series, I love a story like this being put in. This might be my favorite issue thus far simply because it made me happy. I’ve been sick and this is exactly what I needed.
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