Luck Be A Lady: Domino Appreciation...

[Enigmatic Undead]

[Bl00dwerK]

Nice. Did you do that?

[Enigmatic Undead]

Nice. Did you do that?

No I wish. It was drawn by Jorge Molina. If you click on the image it will take you to his original page.

[Bl00dwerK]

No I wish. It was drawn by Jorge Molina. If you click on the image it will take you to his original page.

Okay, thanks. I just wondered, considering your username...

[Bl00dwerK]

Look out for next month's X-Force. We're getting the return of Domino!!

[Enigmatic Undead]

[Bl00dwerK]

About to read X-Force #7 right meow...

[Bl00dwerK]

Got my X-Force #7 in today (getting my issues every two weeks nowadays to save on shipping). I would read it again but I really don't want to see Dom get **** on twice...

[CraigTheCylon]

*defibrillates thread until he feels a pulse*

So yes, I do like Domino a lot. There's a wonderful simplicity to her (not just because she's nearly-powerless, although I do like the idea that even amongst people who turn into metal or control weather some folk can get by just fine on the strength of their own badassery), as moral troubles and personal baggage just slip 'n' slide off her like water on a duck's back. If she turns up in a story, you can bet your butt she's not here to brood about inequality or whine about relationship issues. She's there to do a job and y'all best step aside if you'd like your lungs to remain bullet-hole-free.

And in celebration of that, I'm going to upload some scans from Neena's 3-issue limited series published from January to March, 1997, written by Ben Raab and pencilled by David Perrin, in which she...vents about her personal baggage and past relationship issues! (...erm?)

If you've not read the story - and since it's not on Comixology and doesn't seem to have been released in trade form possible ever, I can't blame you - it starts with Domino taking some time away from X-Force to go to the carnival in Rio de Janeiro for some R&R...which mostly means dancing in a green sequinned bikini and thigh boots because sales I guess.


After tiring of dancing, she gets accosted by a midget jester, who turns out to be a cyborg called Pico. And sometimes, I look back at the sentences I type and blink, hard.


Anyway, she beats him up, then Puck (yay!) turns up and alerts Dom that one Dr. Milo Thurman is due for assassination - and as the name might clue you in on, Domino's not gonna let that happen on her watch. So she finally gets around to wearing some actual clothes (kinda), and goes a-spying.


She punks some guards and tricks a pair of SHIELD Mandroids into shooting each other, but Milo's missing - and Lady Deathstrike has taken up temporary lodgings. Oh dear.

Continued in next post

[CraigTheCylon]

#2 starts with Domino and Deathstrike fighting, obviously, which doesn't go all that well for our gal on account of the self-repairing-cyborg-stretchyarms business trumping a pair of laser pistols and some harsh words. Of course, you should never count Domino out...


Those're thermite charges in her hand, and with a convenient rebound shot they succeed in making Deathstrike live up to the first part of her name...or not. Indeed, she comes back for round 2, this time minus a leg, most of her skin and all of her hair, and gets a decisive advantage with tentacle hentai action!


Uh, maybe should've marked these as NSFW?

Anyway, Domino ends the issue waking up in an old Weapon X base, greeted by the sadly codename-less cyborg Donald Pierce. He has Milo, and he needs him for things. More importantly, we also get a 4-page flashback to where Dom first met Dr. Milo, which also comes with another wardrobe change that, oddly, brings Domino much more in line with her 21st-century appearances.


Expensive champagne can warm even the coldest of hearts. Wisdom.

Continued in next post

[CraigTheCylon]

The conclusion of the story starts with OH COME ON NOT THIS AGAIN


Someone on this creative team reeeeeally likes watching girls get tied up. Anyone know if Ben Raab ever wrote a Wonder Woman story? Seems like it'd be his jam.

Anyway, Pierce here had a brainwave/fart and is trying to convert Milo into another Reaver so he can harness the guy's knack for predictions. He's not a mutant, just a genius who's fantastic at pattern recognition and analyzing future trends, but I guess that's enough for Pierce, who thinks this gift will help him fulfill one of his entirely nebuloud prime directives ('Serve the public trust, protect the innocent, kill mutants with anime porn'?).

Another flashback scene happens, this time showing when Dom and Milo were forcibly separated by a calamitous A.I.M assault on that bunker facility:


Judging by Dom's hair being noticably longer in flashback 2 than flashback 1, we can assume at least a good few months passed between the two scenes, so the difference in her attitude towards Milo isn't completely OOC...although if this were a longer series I'd expect we'd have seen more evidence of organic growth.

Back to the present: Pierce still has Domino captive, so he just shrugs and decides to have her get cyborg'd as well. This seems to be his one and only plan for anything ever. Deathstrike and Skullbuster (presumably spending a weekend away from training Range-Vipers for Cobra Commander) strap Dom into a harness rig and prepare to submerge her in an acid bath - how will she get out of this one?


Luck. Of course. That's probably one of my favourite implementations of her 'power' in any story I've seen just because it's so hilariously random.

The story goes predictable from there; Domino dupes the henchmen, steals a laser cannon to vape Pierce (he got better), but poor Milo's basically half-robot already and can't be moved, so Domino is forced to destroy the facility with him inside it, and move on. Her and Puck go drink to Milo's memory on the last page. And that'd be the last we'd see of Domino by her lonesome...until 2002.

Pretty decent story on the whole, albeit not really remarkable. The art holds up pretty well by '90s standards, mind you.

[CraigTheCylon]

Oh, and here're the covers, too.

[Bl00dwerK]

Thanks for the post. Probablility Manipulation you would think, would be one of those powers writers would love. Like a get out of jail free card...

[CraigTheCylon]

Thanks for the post. Probablility Manipulation you would think, would be one of those powers writers would love. Like a get out of jail free card...

Yeah, you'd think so, but it's rare to see any given writer implement it well. Maybe because it's basically invisible and automatically occurs when danger strikes, and as a result feels less like a true superpower and more like just the kind of plot-convenient fortune that most action movie protagonists benefit from. Still, sometimes you do find the odd occasion when a creator uses it really smartly - there's a particular moment in her 2002 series I'll have to scan later that's basically perfect.

Actually, now I think about it, do you think perhaps Domino should have more direct control over her luck manipulation? There's some slight precedence for this: I haven't read it myself, but apparently in the first X-Men Civil War tie-in issue Domino and Shatterstar got attacked by Sentinels during a thunderstorm (a natural one, not Storm's doing), and by concentrating on the Sentinels, Dom basically heightened the odds against them until they all got struck by lightning. That's a very excessive example but it's a neat idea, that Dom can mentally 'direct' her luck effects, albeit without knowing exactly what the results will be. Might give writers something more tangible to work with.

[LoganAlpha30X33]

Here's a quick question, which looks best on Domino...long or short hair, always liked when she and Cable were starting their relationship and they had to go to the mansion and visit with Jean and Jean loved playing "mom" and making things uncomfortable for Domino, not in a mean way though.