Freedom Fighters #9The most recent attempt at a Freedom Fighters’ ongoing series comes to an end with issue nine. The Federal Government has decided to no longer fund the Freedom Fighters, which is apparently leading to the team disbanding. Personally, I find this odd as in previous miniseries, they were based out of “the Heartland,” some other dimensional retreat of Uncle Sam’s. Maybe with so many Americans being foreclosed on these days, it’s not available to them any longer?
Much of this issue plays up Andy Franklin, the second Human Bomb, and the unstable nature of his powers. He tries a redesign of his current costume, hoping to become less intimidating, as he asks the others, especially the Ray, to see if he can join another hero team. Let’s face it, while many of the other Freedom Fighters have options, someone who needs to either be in a special tank or wearing a big radiation suit has limited career choices. There’s a somewhat ominous scene in the Oval Office between the President and someone called Trumont about the dangers of letting Franklin run around on his own.
Much of the rest of the issue is the team dealing with their being shut down, and a spotlight of several pages on Black Condor, back on the Indian reservations, fighting drug dealers and the like on his own. He states he was empowered to protect the land and he will to do so with or without the government’s help or approval.
The issue ends with Black Condor, Ray, and the Human Bomb fighting a group calling themselves Population Control, and claiming to be from the future, or a future at least. The Freedom Fighters win, but Bomb’s suit is breached. Condor carries him off before the explosion actually harms anyone, but Trumont uses that as his excuse to take Andy into custody. So the series ends as it has run, a not wholly clear cut victory after a fight with someone with some kind of skewed political agenda. With the series cancelled at this point, I don’t when we’ll learn the fate of Andy Franklin. I half expect he’ll be held and experimented on by yet another dark office of the government (comic writers, especially in this series, love those), or he’ll get an off-panel death and/or be used as a weapon in the next major crossover after Flashpoint.
What I liked and what I didn’t:
This series never came together for me, and continued in that vein to the very end. I don’t like the government as bad guy all the time, and would really like the team to have been given at least one actual, unquestionable win sometime in here, aside from against the idiots at the Indian casino in one issue in a few page throw away scene. Uncle Sam seems to take all this very calmly, never really going to bat for the team. Miss America, who the team was saddled with as some kind of watchdog for the government, never even appears in this closing issue.
I have always really liked the Freedom Fighters as a concept and liked a lot of the original characters, and even the second generations. I am indifferent to the new Human Bomb, so his plight here doesn’t really move me. I liked Phantom Lady II, the late Delilah Tyler, much better than the third version. Oddly, both II (Tyler) and III (Knight) were given names shared by Golden Age characters, and I’m not sure that was ever followed up on. I grant that Stormy Knight (sorry, that really sounds like an adult film actress’ name) got better throughout her appearances, but she still has a way to go to live up to the first two women to use that name in my opinion. I really liked Black Condor II, and was displeased at his death in Infinite Crisis, but I will admit the new one is growing on me. I understand the government cutting back in times of financial hardship, but this really seemed like just an odd choice.
I was hoping to really like this series, I rather enjoyed the minis that came before. Some key differences, again in my opinion:
They were heroes, facing threats of all sorts, not just politically themed menaces.
Miss America was a hero, not a rather hard to like government watchdog who threatened people to get her way.
Uncle Sam was a key player, not missing for most of it as he was here.
No deaths. I really don’t see that the first crippling, and then killing, of Firebrand really served any purpose whatsoever. Yes, heroes sometimes pay the ultimate price (until they come back in some contrived story), but this just seemed pointless.
Anyway, just some of my thoughts on what could have been a great series but I found somewhat disappointing.
A COMIC BOOK BLOG RATINGProsConsBlack Condor and the Ray in action, the heroes deciding to fight onNone Rating65% You might also like...
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This post was added on 5 May 2011, 11:40 by Wayland who has contributed 296 posts to this blog.
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