Livewire #2

Written by Vita Ayala
Drawn by Raúl Allén and Patricia Martín
Published by Valiant Comics

Picked up from the first issue’s cliffhanger, Livewire was ambushed and knocked unconscious by a group of heavily armed mercenaries who are working for some mysterious organization and is taking some hidden faculty where she is thrown into a high tech cell with her powers temporarily damped. There she is brutally beaten by one of the mercenaries and there is later given surgery where some kind of experimental chip inside her neck which draws power directly from her brain and is meant to permanently dampen her powers. Afterward, Livewire is thrown back in the cell where she is visited again by that same mercenary who proceeds to brutalize her some more. But even without her powers, Livewire is shown to be more resourceful than expected, and she turns the tables on her capture and escapes, but she’s now severely weakened, and is still a world-famous fugitive and wanted terrorist.

I’ll give this creative team credit for evoking emotions in me, as the scenes in which Livewire is being beaten were genuinely uncomfortable to look at. And also the scene right after the surgery where Livewire comes to in her cell and realizes that her powers are turned off and that she can longer “hear” or feel all of the electronic devices around her anymore was well done, as she reacts like someone losing their eyesight or sense of touch would. This made me care about the character and want to know what’s going to happen to her next. So although it still wasn’t quite as informative as it could have been, I can say that this issue was a success.

Livewire #2