Cyberforce: Hunter-Killer #5
Written by Mark Waid
Art by Kenneth Rocafort
Top Cow
Release date: March 10, 2010

I was never much of a fan of CyberForce during the late nineties. I found that most of the comics put out in that era looked the same and the characters tended to run together. So naturally I was surprised to read CyberForce: Hunter-Killer #5 and find it so much fun.

CyberForce: Hunter-Killer follows Cyberforce, the underground cybernetic resistance force fighting against the world-dominating CyberData Corporation, and their partnership with Hunter-Killer, an elite force commissioned to hunt down and destroy the rogue Ultra-Sapiens created in the 1940s by mad scientist Morningstar. Cyberdata has produced a modern mobile phone system called JETT that activates the latent abilities in Ultra-Sapiens in order to take the government contract for hunting with their S.H.O.C. troops. In the end, team member Network and Damper are forced to sacrifice themselves in order to shut down the spread of the Ultra-Sapien activation.

It was nice to see some fascinating character development in comic books that were known in the nineties for nothing more then extreme violence. Writer Mark Waid has set up a very fascinating integration between the two teams, creating new tensions and a new dynamic between the members, especially Velocity and Ellis. While the writing was a big step up from the early days, it was the art that was particularly brilliant. Kenneth Rocafort‘s gritty style and the dull colouring made the monster designs horrifying. I would love to see Rocafort do some straight up and down horror comics. His creature designs are like something out of Lovecraft.

While the story still smacked of something recycled out of X-Men, the miniseries is fun and exciting, and hopefully leads to more interesting things down the road.

RATING: 3.5 out of 5 Mutations