Youngblood Strike file was a series that that Image Comics began publishing in 1993, it was launched by Rob Liefeld’s Extreme Studios, and was an anthology series, with each issue presenting 2 new solo stories starring members of Youngblood. One thing I liked about the first issue of the original Youngblood series is that it was a flip book. One-half of the issue featured a story with the Youngblood “home team” (who operated in the U.S.) and then you’d turn the comic around to read the story of the Youngblood “away team” (who operated in other countries and were eventually spun-off to the Team Youngblood title). And each side had its own unique cover. But Liefeld removed that gimmick in the second issue. The gimmick was revived for this series, and what’s also interesting is that each story also tied into the greater Image Comics “universe” that the founders were building at the time.
So on one side of the comic we get a story starring DIE HARD. At this point, not much had been revealed about him, we’d never seen his face or knew his real name, I assumed he was some kind of cyborg or robot. In this 13-page story, written and drawn by Liefeld himself, we learn that an early version of Die Hard (referred to as “the golden age Die Hard”) was part of a 3-person superhero team called The Allies who fought together in World War II. One of the other members is a new Liefeld character called Glory. As presented here, Glory is a blatant Wonder Woman analog, she’s an Amazon who had recently arrived in “Man’s World”, dressed in a red, white, and blue costume, who can fly, is super strong, and wears bracelets that can repel bullets on each of her wrists. All that’s missing is a lasso. And she has long white (or maybe it’s meant to be silver) hair.
The other member is Erik Larson’s character, Super-Patriot. In the original Savage Dragon miniseries, he’d introduced Super-Patriot as an old superhero who’d been fighting crime since WWII, but now as an old man his secret identity had been publicly revealed and some criminals had broken into his home and brutally assaulted him, putting him into a coma, which is one the reasons crime had skyrocketed in Chicago by the time Savage Dragon had arrived in the city.
So this story is basically one multi-page fight scene, as the three heroes are on some battlefield fighting a bunch of Nazi soldiers. This earlier Die Hard appears to be more human than the current one, although he still wears a mask covering his whole face. He’s not flying and uses his shield more, ala Captain America.
Ironically Liefeld shows Super-Patriot flying, even though Larsen never showed him being able to do that. I vaguely recall some old interview, or maybe it was in a Savage Dragon letter’s page, where Larson brought it up and came up with his own explanation for these scenes, saying that during the war Super-Patriot briefly took an experimental pill that granted him the power of flight, but it proved to be unstable or had bad side effects or something, so he quit using it.
The story ends back in the present day, where we that a now-retired Glory is still alive and working for the government in some capacity, and she’s talking to Die Hard, revealing that it’s been found out that an evil corporation called Cyberdata, who were the antagonists in Mark Silvestri’s CYBER FORCE series, has managed to kidnap Super-Patriot from the hospital for some nefarious purposes, and she’s giving Die Hard the mission to rescue him.
If you’re a fan of Liefeld’s artwork, you’ll enjoy it here but, again, it’s not much of a story, it’s just all set-up.
On the flipside is a 12-page story written by Rob Liefeld and Eric Stephenson, and drawn by Jae Lee, that features CHAPEL.
At this point it had been revealed in Todd McFarlane’s SPAWN series that it was Chapel who had killed Al Simmons back when they were working together as C.I.A. assassins for Jason Wynn. This issue also opens with a flashback, where we see Chapel, Al, and another agent named Duke, taking out a cell of Cybernet soldiers. They take out the cyborgs easily, and then when the mission is completed Al kills Duke. Back in D.C. we see Al and Duke meeting with Wynn, learning that it was Wynn who had ordered Al to kill Duke, accusing him of being a traitor (although he didn’t show him any evidence). This was a nice callback to the way Chapel would later kill All on Wynn’s orders.
In the present, Chapel goes to a meeting in Wynn’s office, where it’s hinted that Chapel left Wynn on “less than amicable terms.” Wynn tries to recruit Chapel for a new mission, but Chapel refuses, even after Wynn subtly tries to blackmail him. Chapel dismisses Wynn and leaves, after which we see Wynn planning to contact Cybernet leader Giger, in another dramatic cliffhanger.
This story has a bit more meat on its bones, although I remember not being a fan of Jae Lee’s artwork at the time. But I like him more now, and his style fits the darker tone of this story, as he makes Chapel look more like a horror character than a superhero.
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