Q&W 4: It's all in the suit
So, is this comic all about doing superheroics in a hero-free world? Yes, and no. At first it seems that way with only Quantum (that’s Eric, remember?), Woody and Warrant having powers, but when it’s clear that Warrant is not the bad guy they though and they start to act like a team instead of beating each other by accident, something had to give. Heroes need a threat, something that makes it possible that they might be wounded or die. Without this, the suspense is gone. That’s what seemed to happen in Quantum & Woody around issue 14. The last few issues had been filled with more flashbacks than before. Something had to happen.
Enter Magnum and his WarLocke stage left and kicking the door rather crudely open. I can only guess, but I assume that’s why it had to go deeper into the more traditional world of superheroes—although it did it the Quantum & Woody way. Instead of putting friends and families to the heroes in mere danger, Christopher Priest killed off Taylor. Just like that. Magnum, a smallish character from back in issue four made a hard comeback.
WarLocke is the first super powered being that isn’t created in the accident. Shortly after that we see a brief glimpse of someone called Citadel (who appears to be more present in the G.O.A.T.-issue) and well, the shit has just hit the fan. With this, it is established that there are at least a small number of powers out there. And so far yes, it’s all in the suit, the spandex suit.
Even the moon has people living inside it—also in spandex, I might add. Must be something to do with having powers, it creates an urge to put on skin tight suits—with this and Warrant, the whole shebang has gone from few superheroes to a much bigger universe. Of course, this requires you to read spin-offs that I must admit I haven’t done. “God”, or Solar, and Harada obviously have big powers—and no suits, or well, Harada does have a proper suit and not one in rubber.
God however can be excused since she has sworn never to use her powers without the other half of Solar, and Woody when freed from “the quantum containment field” threw away his suit. Eric kept his as he was still into the whole hero-thing despite the power drain. Not that he’s the first to do this. The FBI-agent Tempest had a suit when she went on the G.O.A.T.-business.
So in a way, the world in the comic is very neatly categorized. It was possible to pick any issue and fast understand how things were. This doesn’t mean that the issues were stand-alones, because they weren’t. Not even close. It was filled with an arc from beginning to the bitter end. But through the dialogue and actions, it was possible to jump right in. Part of this is because of the suit-situation. IT was just too neat to be an accident.
Addition: okay—I forgot about the “power-pack”-kids from the Troublemakers in issue 9. But I never really felt they belonged or fit into the story. Sorry. But they did have mini-spandex (dear God, that sounds so wrong). So there.
