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DOMINO!
Domino's vacation continues in this issue. She has traveled to Hong Kong in order to train with Shang-Chi in order to maintain control of her powers around Topaz. Unfortunately, she shops for the trip in the sexy fighter section of a cosplay website, and ends up engaging in sexy cultural appropriation. Fortunately, she resisted the "Trampy Iron Fist" costume.
Shang-Chi is unimpressed, and puts her to the test by asking her to shoot him. He uses KUNG FU to disarm her and knock her out before she can pull the trigger, and then tells her to change and return when she's ready to show her heart and not her bravado.
Their subsequent training session goes as you might expect, with a fighting montage. At the end, Domino proposes a game. If she can get a hit on him, they take a break of her choice. He blinks, she gets him in that millisecond, and they go out dancing. It ends in a make-out session, which is of course interrupted by a group of dudes who are out to get their revenge on Shang-Chi. He must keep those peacock feathers on his altar facing outwards.
DIAMONDBACK AND OUTLAW!
In the meantime, Diamondback and Outlaw are relaxing on the Painted Lady, and eating terrible food (marinara made with ketchup? ew.). They decide to go after Topaz themselves. After getting some intel from Deadpool, they end up at Halcyon Electives, an old, mostly-abandoned facility that used to experiment on mutants. They get in a fight with Topaz and Prototype. Prototype explains that he is basically Domino's Portrait of Dorian Gray. Everything good that happens to her literally hurts him.
FLASHBACK!
The story opens with a flashback to Topaz and Prototype as children. Topaz' father was experimenting on and torturing mutant children. He takes particular joy in being cruel to Prototype, using Domino as a means to accomplish that goal. In the scene, it's Prototype and Domino's birthday, and Topaz's father gives her a kitten. It leads to his arm spontaneously breaking in three places. Topaz is close with Prototype, and hates her father and "that damn ghost girl."
THOUGHTS!
Although Domino #4 doesn't particularly move the story forward, it does provide context for Topaz's grudge towards Domino, and valuable depth to the story arc. It's hard not to feel sympathy for Prototype, who has clearly suffered terribly over the years due to Domino's good fortune. The book is unflinching in its depiction of his brutal childhood, where the gift of a kitten is equal to a mangled arm.
At the same time, though, the book remains delightfully fun and witty and enjoyable. Gail Simone has a gift for humor and absurdity, and displays it throughout this book. I laughed out loud several times when I read it. Domino's interactions with Shang-Chi are a particular highlight of the piece, especially when she gushes about how he fought a man with sword for limbs and nunchuks for a head.
On the nitpicky side, a kung fu master wouldn't have a dojo. He'd have a kwoon. It's also not entirely clear how the training will help Domino, except in some generalized sense that martial arts teaches discipline and focus, and she feels she needs that. But it does that because you practice the same damn basics and forms thousands of times until you hate them and get sick of them and you still continue doing them. Still, that's more a flaw of how Marvel generally presents martial arts as a mystical practice than anything else.
In short, this is a great series. More people should buy it. You should buy it!