PREVIOUSLY: Youngblood Strikefile #4
This issue brings the series back to its original premise of featuring two short stories of different Youngblood characters. However, it no longer formats the issues as a flipbook with two different covers, which is a shame because I always enjoyed that little gimmick.
First up is a 12-page story written by Eric Stephenson and drawn by Sam Liu. It’s essentially a Badrock origin story. His origin was noted trading card that was included in first issue of Youngblood, he was a nerdy 16-year-old boy named Thomas John McCallwho drank some random serum that he came across in the lab of his father, who is a scientist, and the serum transformed him into a big superstrong rock-monster.
This story begins soon after the transformation, where Thomas is in a high-tech facility being studied by his father who is trying to figure out what happened to him and to see if it can be reversed. Despite this dramatic change, Thomas is rather relaxed about this situation, he thinks it’s cool. But after the session is over Thomas is locked into a cell, watched by armed guards, because his father points out how dangerous it could be to others for Thomas to go outside in this condition as he could easily inadvertently hurt people with is great strength. But after hours of being locked up in his cell, Thomas breaks through the walls and out of the building. Then he sneaks down a manhole (which is way too small for him to fit through, but never mind) and into the sewers underground. But then he finds out that he’s not alone under there, ending the story on a cliffhanger.
It’s a decent story, Badrock was always my favorite Youngblood character, and Stephenson captures his youthful outlook very well.
The second story is 15 pages, and it’s called CHALLANGE, and credited as “An until tale of Combat’s past.” This takes place when Combat was a young warrior on his home planet Katella. He’s traveled to the sun of the planet of Katellan’s enemies, the Acurans (the race of fellow Youngblood member, Photon), to find some ancient power source that is rumored to be hidden there. So we see him maneuvering through the temple, overcoming boobytraps and such, all while there’s a running dialog through his head about his being a warrior and yadda yadda yadda.
Frankly, most of this was boring to me, I never cared much for this character. It’s explained that all Katellans are impervious to fire, which is why he can survive on this son. At one point he reminisces about how when he first learned as a young boy that he was fire-proof and that this a trait unique to Katellans, he used to randomly toss small animals into fires because their agony as they burned to death was “a constant source of delight” and amusement to him.
Ooookaaay…
Combat then comes across a female Acuran who also made it into the inner sanctum of the temple, and they fight for a bit until he kills her. Combat leaves, having not found that power source, assuming it must have just been legends after all. There is a little twist ending, hinting at some future story, but I don’t recall if anything ever came of that.
If you’re wondering why I didn’t mention the creative team of this story, it’s because I don’t know. This issue has no credits listed in it, I only know who wrote the Badrock story because it’s listed in the next issue, which has part 2 of it. I can assume that Eric Stephenson wrote it, although I could be wrong. And I don’t recognize the art style at all. Either way, this story just didn’t grab, this issue is only worth reading for the Badrock story.
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