Luck Be A Lady: Domino Appreciation...

[Punisher007]

I personally prefer her with short hair. I think that it suits her better.

[Bl00dwerK]

I personally prefer her with short hair. I think that it suits her better.

Same here. I prefer most girls, 2d or otherwise, with short hait to, so...

[CraigTheCylon]

Here's a quick question, which looks best on Domino...long or short hair,

Can work either way but short generally suits her better. If I had to pick a single favourite 'look' for her it'd be David Lopez' take from the 'security team' arc of adjectiveless X-Men:



Saw someone once call this look 'spy games Pat Benatar' and that struck a chord.

[Punisher007]

Yeah, that looks really good.

[LoganAlpha30X33]

Personally I became a fan of the character when she had the long hair so I guess that's my answer.

[Sea Hound]

Short and a bit messed up, (like she's had some recent action of one sort or another) for me. Maybe an inch more than your pic Craig.
image.jpg

I like when costumes reflect the personality of the wearer, and have at least a nod to function; so for Domino flats for running, sleek all over black body suit maybe with a few cut out panels, short hair, and a military edge. Glamorous but easy to move in. Zip up or down depending on the circumstances.


There are some brilliant cosplays for Domino out there. Here's one by Lara Lunardi.
image.jpg

[CraigTheCylon]

Right, spent all last night and a bunch of this morning doing MORE SCANZ, so now I've got some pages from Dom's 2002 series to show. This one ran for 4 issues, is officially named 'The Perfect Weapon' and was written by Joe Pruett with art by Brian Stelfreeze.

It starts off with Domino breaking into a Hong Kong skyscraper with her typical subtlety:


Other than punching some men in suits, she's there to steal some sort of killer virus sample, which proves easy enough, before she makes an equally restrained getaway:


...and disappears into the night on a motorbike.

Six days later, she meets up for the trade-off with her contact, Jonathan (who also seems to be her mission controller). They have a fairly terse discussion where he comes off like the Mr. Miyagi of the spy trade, for whatever reason, and Dom looks incredibly young, although that might just be her choice in Reeboks talking.


Continued in next post

[CraigTheCylon]

Jonathan gives Domino her 'payment' - an envelope containing a photo that might be her previously-unseen mother and details for a meeting with the hacker who dug it up. That sends Domino off to Atlanta, but the meeting gets cut short by mysterious assailants before Dom can learn much:


So much for that line of inquiry.

Moving onto issue 2, Dom tracks down the hacker guy's apartment and breaks in, counting on him keeping a back-up of whatever he uncovered somewhere on the premises. She's not wrong.


Before she can pat herself on the back too hard though, she's attacked by NINJA MONKS!


They, of course, pull a disappearing act without bothering to explain themselves. But at least Dom has a lead now.

Continued in next post

[CraigTheCylon]

Returning to her hotel, Domino finds Jonathan waiting (?) and he acts supportive and concerned for her...then quietly copies the disc's contents while she's showering. That goes unnoticed, but when he cuts short the talk of Dom's past and gets pushy about sending her on another mission, things turn a bit ugly between the two.


Once he's gone, Dom finally takes a look at the disc, and it's full of files relating to something called 'Project Armageddon', which is just super comforting. Ooh, Cable cameo!


Wow, dick move, Nate.

Anyway, the photo from before was copied from the disc - it's listed under an employee file, so Dom's mother was apparently tied into this intiative to create a weapon capable of destroying whole civilizations. Yikes. In the meantime, Jonathan trades his copy of the Project Armageddon data to a network of underlings, before he's attacked by more of the ninja monks. He chooses to blow himself up with hidden explosives rather than let them get whatever he's holding.

Issue 3 starts with his funeral, and another fun cameo, this time from Siryn. Nice glasses, Terry.


As she says, Jonathan was basically a fence in his spare time, and it looks like he'd been planning to sell the P.A. data to whoever was willing to pay up. I guess the monks didn't agree with the pricetag. In any case, Domino's not interested in making a score here. It's too personal.

Continued in next post

[CraigTheCylon]

The disc's map leads Dom to a hidden facility in the Florida Everglades manned by what seems to be US military types (i.e. not HYDRA or SHIELD or whoever). Domino infiltrates, and we get the token laser-tripwire scene out of the way:


...then the clever bit I was briefly talking about before. Made this pic bigger so it's easier to read:


How to break through a combination lock when you don't know the code but have luck on your side? Just guess! Perfect.

And then we come face to face with THE WEAPON~ and...uhm.


o_0

Continued in next post

[Bl00dwerK]

Nice pic. She needs to hold her gun straight, though...

[CraigTheCylon]

Onto the last issue. The little boy's name is Lazarus, which is...not very good, if I'm honest, since his powers (when revealed) have basically nothing to do with resurrection or life-restoring, but oh well. He's been experimented on for most of his life, and exhibits some kind of telepathy, or perhaps empathy; he can sense the intent of others, whether good or ill.

Obviously, Domino is very confused by this kid who looks so similar to her, but her questions get halted when General McAngry (not his actual name) shows up with his thugs to arrest her. This works out about as well as it ever does.


Naturally, she takes the kid on her way out...


But their escape is put on hold when the damn monks show up again, having followed Dom's trail. And their leader unmasks as...


Of course.

Continued in next post

[CraigTheCylon]

Last one, I promise! Mommy goes on an exposition binge: both Domino and Lazarus are her children, born through artificial insemination with the intention of yielding mutants to be used as genetic weaponry (Mommy herself is a mutant with some form of precognition). Many other kids from their genetic line died, and Domino was deemed a failure due to her powers not fitting with the project's goals and was supposed to be liquidated, but Mommy smuggled her out and left her at a church. Now, Mommy's visions have guided her back here, because she fears Lazarus' powers awakening could bring near-genocidal destruction to the world. Domino objects to this, and so does General McAngry, who refers to Mommy as 'Beatrice' (which used to be Dom's name before it turned out to be an alias) and further explains that she was a willing participant in the project, who subsequently suffered from dementia and was put in an asylum, before she escaped and joined the Armajesuit cult.

A big fight breaks out between Domino, the monks and the soldiers, until Lazarus' powers flare and everyone just...stops. His power, it seems, creates a wide-range aura of pure, blissful calm that overrides all hate and aggression. Unfortunately, it doesn't work on people with shared DNA to Lazarus, and Beatrice gets ready to kill him again...


With a fresh bullet in her mother's back, Domino takes Lazarus and exits via helicopter, leaving behind a lot of monks and soldiers despairing at the loss of such perfect tranquility. General McAngry shoots himself out of misery.

Dom drops Lazarus off at the same church in Chicago where she once grew up, and returns to Jonathan's grave for some last words.


And they all lived happily ever after! Until Beatrice tracks down Lazarus again and murders him without Domino knowing. Man, that's a sucky ending.

I like this series quite a bit. The story's a bit more inventive and the dialogue reads better, not to mention Stelfreeze's art is quite, quite lovely. I'm not exactly fond of the outfit he put Domino in but he draws her with a lot of personality, and her choices in casual wear work very well for her.

Not gonna scan the covers this time: you can find the regular and textless versions here.

[Trident]

Great scan's Craig! I have always loved the idea of Domino's (and Longshots) powerset but I have never followed the her. Your scan's have really got me interested in hunting some of her comics down!

[CraigTheCylon]

Great scan's Craig! I have always loved the idea of Domino's (and Longshots) powerset but I have never followed the her. Your scan's have really got me interested in hunting some of her comics down!

Thanks! I do wish I was, well, better at this; I actually got my scanner recently purely for uploading these particular issues and I've never used one before, so a lot of the pics are coming out squint, but as I said on the last page, these issues haven't been released in a collected format and aren't available digitally at present, so it felt right to show 'em off a bit.

If you're looking for more Domino stuff, I'd recommend Kyle & Yost's X-Force (a.k.a. the 'kill squad') and more importantly the Sex + Violence spin-off miniseries, plus Dennis Hopeless' Cable & X-Force, all of which can be found fairly easily in trade form or digitally. Going back a little further, Dom makes repeated appearances in Fabian Nicieza's Cable & Deadpool run, moreso in the latter half, though you should read all of it because it really is brilliant. I'm sure she's turned up a few times in Deadpool's mountain of books released in the last few years, but I'm kinda pedantic about Wade (only like him with a select few writers involved) so I've been avoiding those. Also, I found out only recently that she made a quick appearance in issues 4 and 6 of the currently-running Punisher series by Nathan Edmondson. It looks like she might return to that series in future, too. Plus there's whatever Spurrier has planned for her in the current X-Force.