Luck Be A Lady: Domino Appreciation...

[CraigTheCylon]

With #62, we reach a turning point for the book, because Jeph Loeb has left the building! I'd say I'm sorry to see him go, but...well, it's not really true, plus I still have a bunch more Cable issues scripted by him to get through after this. Eh. But for now, here we are with 'Human Nature', a one-and-done tale written by John Dokes, with Kevin Lau on pencils, Andrew Pepoy on inks and Leeann Clark on colours!

At a hidden facility, Shinobi Shaw - whom X-Force have briefly crossed swords with in the past - is overseeing some evil scientists' efforts to erase the X-gene from mutants, using Karma's younger siblings Nga and Leon Coy Manh as test subjects. How X-Force find out about this is unexplained, but they're already on site and just cold lettin' themselves in like they own the place:



Yep, we have officially arrived at the point where all '90s books got a manga-looking overhaul to appeal to da yoof of America who were just discovering Japanese culture and gym-rat mentalities via Dragon Ball dubs. It's a pretty major shift, and not an especially welcome one, but at least it's not bad manga art. Also constant LOL at Boomer considering herself 'stable'. Yeah, we still remember you trying to murder Blob, girl. Wasn't that long ago.

Of course, with people like Tabby and Caliban around, X-Force's stealth discipline still leaves a lot to be desired, and they quickly come under attack by security goons under the command of Shinobi's current pet supherhumans, Clear-Cut (basically just Shatterstar Redux) and Mindmeld, who...well, this:



Welp, it sure didn't take long for the borderline yuri fanservice to creep into the proceedings. psht, like i didn't ship luckyboom already But yeah, Mindmeld can transfer someone's mind into someone else's body, and now Domino's stuck sharing cranium space with Caliban. Because of course it was gonna be Caliban. It could only be worse if Copycat was still around.

Gotta say, though, this seems like a bad move tactically on the villains' part. I mean, you've stuck the mind of the best hand-to-hand fighter in the body of the team's resident muscle (in the absence of Warpath), isn't that just gonna make an amalgam warrior with all of Caliban's strength minus the weakness of his limited wits and reflexes? Talk about leaving yourself without any lever...age...



...okay, yes, I admit that would work. And what's he doing with that key? Somethin' funky going on around here...

Things which may or may not be funky in next post.

[CraigTheCylon]

The now-amalgam'd team members (and the empty bodies of Dom and Tabby) get locked up, and Shinobi idly monologues at Sunspot for a while, seemingly just to amuse himself, before revealing that he's suspected treachery from Clear-Cut all along. Clear-Cut fights off the guards, but Mindmeld zaps her own mind into his and forces him to pass out, before he's taken away to the anti-X gizmo.

However, suppressing Clear-Cut takes too much of Mindmeld's attention, which causes her previous work to be undone...



Might have to crop that winking shhh-face down for a future avatar at some point, though I'm loathe to drop my current one.

Once the team is freed, everything naturally goes to hell, with Boom Boom taking a particular delight in obliterating the place. Mindmeld is slapped with an inhibitor collar to keep her down, and Domino pulls Clear-Cut out of the gizmo, when -



The art goes wacky on the last few pages; Adam Pollina apparently helped out, and isn't quite successful in getting his own style to mesh with Lau's manga stuff.

Also, no fair on the borrowed-from-the-Vision hand attack! Who even remembers what Shinobi's powers are, anyway? And why's he called 'Shinobi', anyway? Dude does not resemble a ninja OR a Mega Drive/Genesis game in the slightest. I hope he gets punched.



YEEEEAAAAAH. And with a damn good one-liner to boot. That's more like it. (oh, and if it's keeping you up at night, Clear-Cut was unaffected by Shinobi's gizmo because he's not actually a mutant. woops)

The story wraps itself up with Clear-Cut mentioning he owed Cable a favour for some unexplained reason, and that's that. I'm going to assume the Coy Manh kids were taken to a nice home safely.

To be continued in next post.

[CraigTheCylon]

Skipping forward now to #66, 'The Tragic Kingdom', written by new regular wordy person John Francis Moore, with Pollina and Mark Morales back on art duties. In the interim, X-Force finally realized they were down a man, and have resorted to chasing Risque, the last person who saw Warpath, in order to get some answers.

Domino's been off doing other stuff, though:



Yes, we have at last caught up with Domino's 1997 solo book! Quick, jump back to page 3 and pretend like I actually put this stuff in chronological order to start with! Y'know what I said earlier about the fireworks factory? This is how it starts. Whereas Loeb danced around Neena like she was covered in plague and left her a cipher for all issues bar the ones where she tracks, fights and kills Grizzly, Moore has no qualms about pulling back the veil a little.

Also, that is another excellent hat for Dom.

Also also, those security guys look hilarious. But who's so interested in keeping tabs on our girl?



Oh, it's Bridge. Figures - he is exactly the kind of butthole that leaves you to stew in a cupboard for hours then tries to act like you're still buddies. Hmph.

Bridge's request leads into #67, 'Stand-Off'. Some time ago, Bridge quietly recruited Dani Moonstar into SHIELD so they could get a double agent into the Mutant Liberation Front, which has worked out pretty well so far. Unfortunately, in a post-Onslaught world the MLF are drawing too much attention to themselves, and Bridge wants to get Dani out of there before she gets caught by the wrong people, and without anyone figuring on her SHIELD connections. Sounds like a job for a mutant commando unit with a fair few of Dani's old friends on the roster...



You can tell it's a serious mission when Domino actually takes the time to disguise herself. And jeez, how much make-up you think it takes to get her looking that colour?

To be continued in next post.

[CraigTheCylon]

It just occurred to me I didn't mention the specific set-up in the previous post. Woops. Uh, the MLF - meaning Wildside, Dragoness, Forearm, Tempo and Locus (who 'ports off by herself pretty quickly) - plus inside-girl Moonstar have holed up in a supposed cancer research lab they think is secretly working on mutant-targeted diseases. Local police were holding the perimeter and planning to negotiate for hostage release, but they've since been relieved by agents of Operation Zero Tolerance, who are exactly as nice as they sound.



Look at our girl busting out her best Lois Lane impression. Will it be enough to fool these (oddly catsuited) para-government stooges?



...apparently not. Something's up with that severe-looking strawberry blonde there. I'd advise keeping your eye out for her.

You may be (but probably won't be) shocked to find out things take a turn for the chaotic once the disguised X-Forcers enter the lab. They're pretty much immediately made by the MLF and have to fight them off; their outside back-up team of Boom Boom, Shatterstar and Rictor are found and KO'd by the Zero Tolerance crew; and just to put a cherry on top, three of the supposed hostages turn out to be Zero Tolerance bio-Sentinel operatives in disguise. It never rains, right?

The fight picks up in #68, 'Girl Talk' (...seriously?) with Pop Mahn now on pencils, and it goes poorly for X-Force. Really, really poorly. The Sentinels are naturally adaptive, enough to counter the whole team's powers, and are nimble to boot. Things get desperate pretty quick.



It's a little detail, but I do love that there's still smudges of flesh-tone make-up on Domino's patch on that second panel.

But while I applaud Neena's foresight in packing some hidden James Bond gear, I must share Sunspot's concerns over he plan of 'run directly at the killer robots with a live bomb in one hand'. That seems...a bit dangerous.

To be continued in yadda yadda.

[CraigTheCylon]

We needn't have worried, of course, as Domino has an answer to assuage our fears:



And that might be the first time she's referenced having luck powers in this book. I guess they were waiting for her solo mini to establish it first, maybe? Who knows. Still, badass moment is badass.

Badass moment may not have been all that smart, though, as there's no way for the rest of X-Force to make a return trip and retrieve her. So it's not too surprising that when Domino wakes up, she wakes up somewhere else entirely:



(she also appears to have woken up in a costume that she wasn't wearing and indeed may never have worn before)



I really wish the art was a bit...nicer here. A bit less deadline-panic and full of weird, lazy eyes, because this is important stuff.

And, yes, that IS the woman I told you to keep an eye on. Commander Ekatarina Gryaznova. Whom I shall be calling Kat Grya from now on because there is no way in hell I'm trying to get that name right consistently.

Are you still reading these parts before you go on to the next post? I wouldn't.

[CraigTheCylon]

This next page is, no joke, one of the single most important pages I've scanned to date. Possibly the most important, if you're as nerdy as I am about background minutiae. Make sure your peepers are dry and clean in advance:



And there we go. That is, officially, more solid details on who Domino is than we got out of, what, 40-odd issues with Loeb? Plus concurrent issues of Cable? And it's ONE PAGE. But combine that page with the facts from her two solo books and you can come up with a pretty straightforward timeline for Domino's life, from birth through to adulthood:

- Born to Beatrice in Project Armageddon, deemed unsuitable, stolen and hidden away in a Chicago church for protection
- Runs away from said church at age 13 when powers began manifesting
- Lapses into minor crime, hence brief capture by Seattle police
- Appears in underground fight clubs on Madripoor age 15
- Recruited by US government, assumedly spent several years in training before being quietly fielded
- Attached to NSA protective detail for Milo Thurman, whom she eventually marries
- Thwarts AIM's attempt to capture Milo but is forced to leave him as a result
- Leaves NSA, abuses powers to accrue personal fortune through gambling (I BLOODY KNEW SHE WOULD)
- Plies trade as a solo mercenary/assassin under multiple aliases
- Joins the Six Pack, beginning her long-term relations with Cable

...and from there it goes into her early X-Force appearances as Tolliver's captive. Isn't it nice to have things spelled out sometimes?

Of course, assuming any of it's true.



Not that I enjoy correcting my favourite mutant, but I'm inclined to think her denials are just instinctive B.S. here. After all, nobody's really gotten this close to the truth of Domino's life before - I highly doubt even Cable knows this much about her - and it's probably freaked her out. It's understandable she'd be protective of her secrecy.

Not sure how any of this relates to Kat Grya here, mind.



Okay, so Domino broke a robot. So what?

To be concluded in next post.

[CraigTheCylon]

There's gonna be an actual point to all this, right, Kat?



Ah. Uhm. Yeah, okay, so, totally get why you're mad now. I suppose the zappy-hands stuff isn't entirely without warrant.

Still, isn't this nice? Not only do we get a potted backstory for Domino in the space of one issue, we also give her a personal nemesis with an axe to grind, one who thankfully isn't off-limits because she's too important to Deadpool's backstory or some crap.



How many times does a girl gotta get knocked out in one book, huh? Could've just tied her down the first time, but no...

And I think we'll leave it there. Because it's a really good cliffhanger, and I'm feeling like such a tease today. What comes after this? I don't really know. Haven't read ahead yet. So what exactly 'Domino like you've never seen before!' amounts to, I can't begin to guess. Maybe she'll have a patch on the other eye, so they match and she looks like a panda? Hopefully not. We'll see when we see!

Oh, and some news! While the Marvel solicits continue to be a depressingly Dom-void place, Diamond Select at least haven't forgotten our girl, as wave 65 of their Marvel Minimates series - this one entirely Deadpool-themed - will include another figure of fair lady luck, which is either her 3rd (if you believe them) or 2nd (if you believe me, which you should because I'm right). Here's the full-wave pic:

Marvel-Minimates-Wave-65-Deadpool.jpg

Domino will come in a 2-pack with 'Marvel NOW!' Deadpool and, yes, she does include alternate swappable parts to make her into Copycat, but, y'know, you can just accidentally 'lose' those down the back of a couch. Or in the bin. And you'll be left with a neat modern-style Dom to partner the Greg Capullo-era one we got from that X-Force box. Neato!

[Drakeon]

I will own that entire set. Domino/Copycat looks great and finally a Siryn to round out X-Force.

[InSavnity]

Hmmm...

1997...

While this lady helps Western children wipe out the last traces of pre-puberty from their organisms thanks to her Fox Kids cartoon

Carmen SanDiego.jpg

our girl shows up dressed like this:

Neena SanDiego.jpg

Coincidence? I don't think so.

[Bl00dwerK]

Lots of cool scans (and information about Bea, too!). I need to read the solo stuff I got pretty soon and get some more background. I do, however, kinda like here origin to be ambiguous. I like a good mystery!

[DavidMunroe]

I've been patiently awaiting the period in which you'd reach this epoch of Domino's chronicles, Craig, and how ecstatic I am. Double commendations to JFM for the retroactive info-dump, I'm really stimulated right now. JFM's run on X-Force is one of the best comic book pieces I've ever had the blessing and honor to engorge myself within and despite any of the minor pitfalls dabbled throughout his tenure I do very much appreciate what he did for Neena and the rest of the cast.

[CraigTheCylon]

Thanks, David! I haven't read any further into JFM's run yet, but there's already a noticable tonal change. The book still has its teen-friendly 'attitude' but it feels a little more, I don't know, introspective? It doesn't feel like it's forever rushing to the next shooty bang bang now. I like it more this way.

I do, however, kinda like here origin to be ambiguous. I like a good mystery!

I get what you mean, and the frustration that boils over in my recap posts - especially those last ones - isn't there because I have to know every single detail of any given character's life before I decide to care about them. Mystery is good when it's handled well. But mystery can't be static. There has to be some sense of development, even if some of it's false leads.

Perhaps an example would be better...think of Lost, if you remember it. Granted, when it eventually revealed what all was going on, it was a damp squib, but it was excellent at drip-feeding new information and oddness to viewers over time. The smoke monster, the hatch, the numbers etc. - there was always a sense that these things mattered, and were building somewhere, even if the connections weren't obvious. That's how you keep people enthralled. If Lost was handled the way Loeb handled Domino, well, by season 3 the survivors would still be on the same stretch of beach, staring around in confusion, not having moved or learned anything in all that time besides 'our plane crashed'.

Of course, it'd also have been less annoying for me if every single Domino appearance didn't have a little caption box essentially saying "Her name is Domino, and she is SUPER CAGEY about her MYSTERIOUS PAST!!". Eventually that got to feel like trolling.

[Trident]

This has to be the most in-depth thread on CBR! It's a constant joy check in on it. Thanks for your continuous contribution to it CraigTheCylon.

[Bl00dwerK]

Perhaps an example would be better...think of Lost, if you remember it.

I never watched Lost, but I get where you're coming from. Dom's history is probably fine, but in the case of someone like Wolverine.. fleshing out his backstory ruined the character for me...

[Bl00dwerK]

This has to be the most in-depth thread on CBR! It's a constant joy check in on it. Thanks for your continuous contribution to it CraigTheCylon.

Yeah, Craig's great. We are lucky to have a great bunch of regulars who post here, and I had no idea this thread would be this cool when I posted it! Craig and his scans have been a BIG part of that...