Starbolts #550: More Than Machine

Hail!

     One storyline ends and another begins as we celebrate the comic's 550th issue! We start with Jack and Anya wrapping things up in Gronzy before heading back to Singapore for a much needed vacation. Seriously, they need one after dealing with Dimitri and Emil. Those baddies won't be seen again for quite some time. Especially since one of them is quite dead. However, we may be seeing Piotr and Natalia again some day.

  Now let's talk about Jack and Anya. Jack is a little broken due to the cybernetics in his body. Even after Aquita and the finest doctors enhanced him to the point where he is close to human as possible, he still has some issues. Something as simple as breaking a glass would mean more to a cyborg than it would for the rest of us. So, Anya is doing whatever it takes to make Jack feel human. The night was always going to end in romance anyway. The wine incident just kicked it into high gear. Now that's love. She wanted to show him he can't break her. It's a shame about that rug, though. It's just as well. It wasn't coming back with them anyway!

    Onto the next story! It looks like we finally find out who the void witch was and it looks like it was Cecilia all along. How is she a void witch? What's her story? We'll find out next week for sure. In case anyone is keeping track, this is now the fourth woman Zarantha has screwed. I think she has an issue with people with hair. I really do. 

See you next time as we delve into Cece's background! 

Starbolts #549: Destination Gronzy

 

 Hail!

    Whew! What could be worse than facing a genetically enhanced hulking monster that killed your grandparents? Jack found out firsthand that meeting your girlfriend's parents is always going to be the hardest think you ever do in your life. Jack has never done that before and this week he performed that task admirably. Sadly, he never had the chance with his first girlfriend, Scarlett. They were always "too busy". I wonder if they even know she's gone. That's a story for another time.

    This is a pivotal milestone in Jack and Anya's relationship and Starbolts #550 promises to take it even further. What'll happen? You will just have to wait and see. 

    As far as this comic goes, we got a look into the background of Anya Petrov. She was an orphan who lost her birth parents in an explosion in Kiev. She was raised by two former spies. Eagle-eyed readers should get the first names of the adoptive parents. I wasn't about to go with the stereotypical "Boris and Natasha" or even "Ivan". Their names come from the real names of two very awesome Russian superheroes, the Black Widow and Colossus. Even their character designs draw some inspiration from Piotr Rasputin and Natasha Romanov.I thought that was clever. =D

    All of the loose ends are wrapped up and now we're going to celebrate Anya's joining the ranks of the Starbolts in #550. After that we'll be getting a special Halloween-like storyline for Sara and Crystal. Stay tuned! 

See ya next time!

Starbolts #548: Mission: Moscow

 

 Hail!

    It certainly seems like Dimitri did not want to come home. What will await him now that he's back on the soil of "Mother Russia"? Nothing good, I wager. At first he will have what will no doubt be an excruciatingly long debriefing. Then he will be tried for his crimes of abandoning his post, assault and everything else. Once they get Jack's report, he will most likely be put in a gulag as he feared. We probably won't be seeing Dimitri for a very, VERY long time.

    The good news is that now Anya is free to be a Starbolt! Hang on a second, though! She wants Jack to meet her parents? That's not going to go the way he expected. More on that next week. Does she mean her literal parents or something else? We'll keep you guessing until next week. After that it's onto Starbolts #550. I can't believe we're there already! It seems like yesterday we were at Starbolts #500! Time flies when you're having fun!

 Enjoy the comic and we'll see ya next time!

Starbolts #547: Flight of the Eagle

Hail! 

    Well, this is an interesting turn of events. It looks like Jack has decided to finally embrace his heritage and become Iron Eagle after all. When he met his grandfather in Starbolts #504, he was adamant in refusing to pick up the shield. What happened? What changed? I'll explain why in future comics. Right now Dimitri has to be delivered to Moscow. It doesn't take a lot to imagine what his superiors are going to do to him. Suffice it to say Dimitri's debriefing will be quite unpleasant. At least the monster that killed the first Iron Eagle and Spitfire is dead and their spirits can rest easy knowing it can no longer threaten the world and their daughter, grandchildren and unborn great-grandchild.

    I'll also answer where the creature came from another time. We know that Terra Nova made the monster. Was he one of Clive's creations? No. He just likes to clone hot girls. That's just ten shades of creepy right there. Don't worry. He never did it for any form of gratification. He thought of Sara and Crystal as weapons. Nothing more. So, where did Emil come from? That'll be revealed in time. Do stay tuned for that!

    See ya next time!

Starbolts #546: No More Super-soldiers

 

 Hail!

    It's finally come down to this. The monster responsible for the deaths of the first Iron Eagle and Spitfire is loose and has come to finish what he started. If he has his way, he would go after Sara, Sara's unborn child, Crystal, Andrea and the first Lady Liberty. Helping him on his quest, of course, is Dimitri. Dimitri is not quite right in the head at the moment. You can thank the Russian variant of the super-soldier serum he ingested for that.

    The American variant gave Jack and his sisters some of their fantastic abilities. The sisters received high endurance and resistance to injury as well as Jack. The three of them also "blossomed" early as puberty was a trigger for the serum as I explained in the comic. It should be noted that when Sara and Crystal eventually joined the Starbolts, no one noticed any super-soldier-like tendencies until the great reveal that they were the twin daughters of Stan and Andrea Whitefox.

    Of course Clive Marshall was giddy at the prospect of getting two super-soldiers in the employ of Terra Nova. That's why he experimented on the both of them. He wasn't about to miss his chance to really examine what made the girls tick. At least he's in jail now along with the rest of Terra Nova's inner circle. There's still much the Starbolts have to clean in the wake of Terra Nova's dissolution. That green guy is definitely one of them as he did kill the three Whitefoxes' grandparents.

    Jack is now face to face with their killer. It's up to him to stop him before he kills again.

    Now that we know what all three Whitefoxes inherited from their mother. What have they inherited from their father, the world's greatest sorcerer? Stay tuned and find out!

Starbolts #545: MIssion: Singapore

 

  Hail!

    As the Starbolts track down the nanobots, Jack has a mission of his own to undertake. It seems that Anya's former partner, Dimitri Smirnov, finally went crazy due to the super-soldier serum coursing through his blood. Time for some backstory!

     The original serum courses through the blood of Jack, Sara and Crystal thanks to their mother, Andrea. However, the three of them all have varying levels of super-soldier-like skills because each offspring has different amounts of the serum inside of them. Jack has the most and as a result is a true super-soldier. Sara and Crystal being twins allowed for only great agility, endurance and the like. They can match their brother in a fight. But, in the end he has more inside of him. 

    Anya and Dimitri both received variants of the serum their government created in the wake of Andrea's adventures as the second Lady Liberty. Her serum changed her and she passed it down to her children. In Anya and Dimitri's case, they were both test subjects the Russian government wanted to use in order to create their own brand of super-soldier that was unlike the American variant. There was one small problem. The Russian variant drove men completely insane while women were left untouched. Why that happened is anyone's guess.

    Now we're back to today's comic and Dimitri has released the creature responsible for killing Iron Eagle and Spitfire as seen in the flashback from Starbolts #507. You can bet that Jack won't be happy about this creature bring allowed back into the world. Maybe he SHOULD have taken a Centurion wrecking ball as backup. I mean you can't go wrong with a cosmic powered sledgehammer, right? You might call it "overkill". I call it "leveling the playing field". This creature is bad news. Very bad news. We'll see just how bad he is as we march on to Starbolts #450.

    One side note before we go. I looked up the skyline of Singapore and those buildings are fancy. I wondered how I would copy the style....and the neon. It's like the city is in the future. That would have definitely pushed the boundaries of what I was capable of. Still, what I came up with was good. 

We'll see how the rest of this spy movie unfolds next week! See ya then!

Starbolts #544: Loading Norad.exe

 Hail!

    This week Norad has been saved and something quite different has emerged in his old body now that Pegasus and the nanobots have successfully merged programs. You can probably debate over what happened after Norad went into his new body. My best guess is that the two entities came to a mutual understanding and decided to merge. The One and Pegasus no longer exist in the conventional sense. What was left behind is something completely different and now the Starbolts are left behind to try and find a cure for the nanobots while it's off seeing the world.

    I don't think the Starbolts will take the nanobot's departure lightly and will attempt to find where it went off to. I mean since it has a life threatening ailment wouldn't it make sense for it to say behind with those who would want to treat it? Who can say? It's not very logical.

    Next time we're going to be switching gears to a story about Jack and Anya as we head into Starbolts #550! Stay tuned!

See ya next time!