What Do You Do When There's No More Covert Action To Be Had?

I picked up four volumes of WildCats, 2.0 I guess, a few months ago, mostly because I was curious to see how it lead into version 3.0, the two trades of which I purchased when DC released them over the last couple years. Mostly, it's made me want to go back and reread version 3.0, now that I better understand how things got to that point, but I did have some other thoughts.

- The first volume does lay out the basic idea very well. All these various people were brought together to help fight this war against the Daemonites that's been raging across the universe for ages. Except they'd recently found out the war's been over for some time, and the powers that be simply took their sweet time tracking down all the remaining pockets of fighting to let them know. So the team members are trying to decide what to do next. And the answers are pretty varied. Grifter reverts back to old habits, Zealot decides it's a good time to clear up some loose ends, Voodoo doesn't really have anything to do, which makes her a bit more obviously adrift than some of the others, but she also seems more comfortable with her life than the rest.

- Spartan gets the most interesting task, being left an entire corporation to run as he sees fit, with only the basic idea to use it to help humanity. It's interesting to see him saddled with this, since I feel like he's the only member of the team that never really had a choice about fighting. The others were drafted, but he was literally built to fight Daemonite. So what does the android do when his purpose is no longer necessary? And while he clearly believes in the idea of using Halo to improve the world, I'm not sure he has any clue how to do so. It's something entirely outside his realm of experience, so we don't see him do anything with Halo. Most of what he does involves trying to help old teammates, or in one case, helping a cop try and get some new drugs off the streets. But he does that with superpowers, not business acumen. Joe Casey did something similar in his last storyline for Uncanny X-Men, except Archangel did use his money, rather than superpowers. I don't know if that's a case of Casey refining his approach by the time he got to Uncanny, or if he was just trying to underscore the limitations Spartan's dealing with.

- Which is where Noir, a weapons merchant, comes in. Lobdell introduces him in the first volume, as part of a fake weapons buy Spartan's holding. He winds up being hired to be the computer guy, but it's his ambition that sets things in motion for what happens in version 3.0. Because his goals are more mundane (money, power), he can see paths to exploit Spartan (as Jack Marlowe), with his loftier, more ambiguous goals, can't. Those plans are still limited in scope in Noir's hands, because his goals are limited, but he still provides a starting point no one else could.

- It's a nice touch that as Noir berates Spartan and Grifter for being so lacking in vision, he doesn't see that he's fallen into some old super-villain cliche. The double-cross, the big speech about his scheme, it's old-school Bond villainy.  I mean, death traps, idiot minions, not just killing the hero at the first opportunity? He prattles on, never realizing Spartan's letting him reveal his whole scheme, or suspecting that Grifter might be more resilient than he thinks. For all that Noir thinks they're locked in their ways, he ends up like most villains, his ego being his downfall.

- The conspicuous absence of Warblade. He shows up in a flashback story, and one character even comments on his absence, but other than that, he never shows up. He even gets cut out of a picture Dr. Stone has of the old team (well, you can see part of his arm, but otherwise he's out of the picture). I don't know if that's because someone else was planning to use him, or neither writer, first Lobdell and then Casey, had any plans for him. Maybe he adjusted better than the others, walked away with no regrets. Who knows.

- The team as a whole is highly unconcerned with civilian casualties. When Jacob Marlowe (team founder) is trying to draw out an old mistake of his named Kenyan, he basically lets the guy slaughter a casino full of people. Prior to that, he didn't do much to rein in Grifter when he was firing into a crowd of people at Kenyan or beating up cops who tried to arrest him. When Slaughterhouse Smith the 2nd goes on a rampage, there doesn't seem to be much concern for the dozens of women he killed just for having the last name "Marlowe". Heck, even when Maxine Manchester gets torched trying to take Smith down (he shoots fire out of his eyes), neither Spartan nor Grifter seem terribly concerned. Maybe I shouldn't be surprised. Grifter's a merc, and kind of an asshole. Spartan's an android who says he can't feel, and they both tried to keep her out of it, but still.

- I'm not sure whether I buy that bit about Spartan not being able to feel. At times, I can buy it. When he says he isn't sure whether he'll have Maxine repaired (she's a cyborg, heavily machine), well, it seems callous, but from a non-emotional standpoint, Maxine is kind of nuts. She was an anarchist in that looney tunes, burn everything sense, and giving her a robot body with machine guns and stuff is asking for trouble. At the same time, he said he wanted to exterminate Smith for what he did to Voodoo, which suggests he's feeling something (they used to be an item, apparently). And he's capable of surprise, because he was definitely stunned when Grifter told him Zealot was alive. He seemed angry when he saw that car chase on TV, angry enough to teleport out and stop it in broad daylight. Maybe that was a concession to fans wanting more action, and so Casey went with it so he could make Spartan deal with the fallout? I don't know.

- Travis Charest drew the first few issues, before it switched largely over to Sean Phillips (with a couple of issues drawn by Steve Dillon and Bryan Hitch in there). I prefer Charest's design sense to Phillips'. Charest's Kenyan seems more creepy and other worldly (the wide-brimmed hat with pupiless eyes peeking out from underneath helps), while Phillips' just looks like a guy in a suit with a gun. At the same time, some of Charest's page layouts were a bit confusing. He maybe ditches the panel borders a bit too much. Phillips doesn't go that route, so it's at least easy to tell what order things are happening in. Phillips does do some good, moody work. There's a bit in Spartan's confrontation with Slaughterhouse that evoked a real Darkseid vibe, which was very effective. Very spooky too. 'Pray that you have more to give.' Yikes.

What's Under The Surface?

Something else I'm wondering about in regards to Grifter. What exactly happens when a Daemonite hops into a human body? Is it simply a soul/mind transfer, or something else? We see this blue mist or ghost leave the bodies they were inhabiting when one dies. In some cases, it's more like they took a person's skin, and fit it over their regular bodies. The cop in issue 2, the one the military has video footage of impersonating a soldier.

The first method seems more careful, since it wouldn't seem to leave any evidence the deceased was anything other than a normal human, but the second seems to make them more powerful. At least, those Daemonites have kicked Cole around more than the one on the airplane was able to.

Maybe it's a progressive thing. They transfer their essence into a human, but gradually they form a body inside the person. Sort of the reverse of how a pearl is formed, where the oyster gradually coats the grit and builds up this shiny coating so it doesn't irritate them.

Which raises the question of how far they got with Cole. He can hear them and he's at least occasionally showing greater-than-human reflexes (catching an arrow fired at him). Whatever the Daemonites were transferring into him, it doesn't seem to have a consciousness of its own. That doesn't mean there couldn't be something forming inside him as things progress.

This is the frustrating thing about Grifter. There are all these conceptual things, world-building I guess, that I find really intriguing. Yet I didn't stick with the book because the characters failed to engage me.

What's Their Game?

The last page of Grifter #4 reminded me of certain questions I've had for awhile. One of the Daemonites interrogating Ms. Reese states that it hates this world, and this body it's in, and will do anything to get away from both.

I've wondered pretty much since the series started what was the Daemonites' purpose on Earth. They don't seem to be making a concerted effort to conquer the planet. There isn't yet any pattern apparent to the people whose appearances they assume. If Cole's near miss was anything to go by, they mostly work by opportunity, seizing easy targets. Which minimizes the risk, but doesn't allow for a strategic approach. Maybe they couldn't manage that, if what the one Daemonite said about Earthlings all looking alike was true. They wouldn't be able to distinguish people in useful positions to replace. At any rate, Dire Wraiths they aren't.

I thought there might be a chance they were searching for something. An object, maybe a person. They showed up five years earlier, right around the time all the superheroes and other strange things appeared in the DCU. Maybe something they wanted fell to Earth. That's how Earthworm Jim got his supersuit, it was lost in transit, and he ended up having to fend off all the alien weirdos who came looking for it. Admittedly, different universe, but the point is, that's something that happens in fictional universes where aliens show up. So far, there hasn't been any indication they're looking for something.

Mostly, they seem concerned with staying hidden. Which would explain why they're so freaked about Cole. He can hear their discussions, which means he can help locate them, which means their covers aren't secure. But if they hate being here, and hate pretending to be human, why not leave? The simplest answer is they can't. Their ship or transmatter portal is busted, and they're stuck here until they fix it, someone comes to pick them up, or they stumble across a man-made method of getting where they want to be. In that case, why impersonate people? There have to be places on the earth they could go and retain their regular appearances and just wait, or work on their ship.

The other possibility is they're hiding from something else. Something that scares them so badly, they hide in the bodies of creatures they despise because it offers them some protection. In that case, it might be better to randomly take people to hide within, because they can spread out over a larger area. That might prevent whatever they're afraid of from wiping them all out in one go. Assuming it doesn't have the firepower to level the entire world, or if it does, that it's unwilling to do so without evidence Earthlings are in cahoots with the Daemonites. Being scattered, if one of them was attacked, it could alert the others and their distance would give them a bit of time to prepare.

Sibling Rivalry

I may have read it wrong, but when Cole's brother came after him at the end of Grifter #2 I had the impression Cole was the older of the two. I suppose it was Cole's comment that he taught Max how to shoot, which seems like an older brother sort of thing.

If I'm right, it could switch things up from what I expected. When we learned in the first issue that it would be Cole's brother the military was sending after him, I figured Cole was almost certainly the younger brother. He'd tried to be like his big bro, followed him into the military and all, but he couldn't ever measure up. Probably heard a lot of "why can't you be more like your brother Max?" growing up, and while he was in the service. Got fed up with that, and after he was out of the military, put what he'd learned as a 'Delta operator' to use as a con man.

Instead, it looks like Cole might be the older sibling, and so perhaps Max followed him. Max did assure that colonel his loyalty was to the service and his country, not his brother, but talk is cheap, and family can exert a pull whether you want it to or not. It could be interesting. Max might have looked up to Cole in the past, but is disappointed by his more recent career choices. Which wouldn't preclude him from wanting to help or protect his brother, but might make him more likely to doubt his brother if Cole chooses to tell him what's going on. Or Max might secretly envy his brother, who lives by his own rules, rather than following orders. In that scenario, Max could be more inclined to listen to Cole, even try and help him. Which, if Max can use the team he was supposed to assemble (or at least keep them out of Cole's way), could be handy. Or, it could give the aliens one more lever to use against Cole, since it wouldn't surprise me at all if they have people in the military.

What could happen is Cole appears to confide in Max, to trust him, but in fact pulls the wool over his eyes. Could be because Cole is no longer sure who he can trust. Maybe before then he could meet some people who aren't disguised aliens, but are on the aliens side. Their allies or lackeys. Or it could be Cole wants to protect Max from reprisals by his superiors, so he burns that bridge. Or appears to burn that bridge, depending on how much he trusts Max and Max' ability to act. It wouldn't hurt for that colonel to believe the brothers are enemies, when they're secretly still allies.

Or maybe that's just who Cole is now. He's been conning people so long he can't help himself, he's always sizing people up for how he can use and discard them. I don't think it would hold up, Edmundson certainly hasn't played him as that callous. He didn't treat Gretchen as someone he was trying to fool, for example, but it's a possible direction, that Cole's really not a very nice person. He might mostly pull cons on crooked businessman, but that doesn't mean he's all sweetness and light. So even when his brother tries to help, because he cares, Cole can't help but abuse that trust.

Blue Aliens Are Hiding Inside Everyone, Sure They Are

I was thinking, do you think Grifter could work as a series if the reader wasn't sure of what was going on? This isn't meant as a comment on whether it works as presently constituted, it's just a thought I had.

What I mean is, we would know what Cole thinks is going on (weird creatures pretending to be human or hiding within humans for some reason), but we wouldn't know if that was true? Say Edmonson had opted to leave out the section where Cole wakes up in a warehouse, with wires running from him to the creature floating in the tube, and Cole's subsequent escape. We might know something happened to him, that he lost time, that he's hearing voices, but we wouldn't necessarily know that the situation is what he believes it is.

In the audience's mind, there would be the question of whether Cole's right about what's going on, or if he's crazy. Maybe some person he conned in the past caught up to him and tortured him. Maybe he decided to celebrate his succesful con at the start of the issue, and took something that doesn't agree with him.

The problem might come with the fact that Cole's already killed two people*. Since we know they're creatures in disguise out to kill him, it's more excusable. He's acting in self-defense, since he didn't kill either of the people on the plane until after they attacked him. If there's the possibility he's imagining all this, then there's also the chance he killed two innocent people. It would require the scenes be presented differently in the comic, since it would have to be ambiguous whether the woman pulled a metal spike from her arm and tried to kill him, but it's workable. Make it so we don't see where the stabby object comes from, or perhaps we don't even get a good look at what she attacks him with.

The part about him being on the run from the authorities wouldn't be altered all that much. We might wonder if it wouldn't be a good thing for him to be caught, but his flight and attempts to evade capture would otherwise play out the same. I think it'd be possible to portray the forces pursuing him in such a way the reader wouldn't be sure whether they're after Cole because they think he's a terrorist, or because they're some of these creatures trying to keep their existence secret. It's a question of how long one could go with the "is he crazy or not" storyline before there would need to be some resolution one way or the other.

* Three, if we count him clubbing Xavier to death in the warehouse with the pipe, but in this hypothetical scenario, we wouldn't have seen that.