Green Lantern Annual #2 (1993) Bloodlines Outbreak Part 7

[pyrotwilight]

This issue in the overall Bloodlines storyline is probably the oddest in both its extreme violence and sexual themes that run through the issue.

 

This story opens up in a hospital as a certain Parasite walks its way through (leaving a few bodies behind) it until she finds a recently paralyzed young man, Nik Mayak.

 

Panels 1-5: I'm liking where this is goin-
Panel 6-7: AW SHIT.

We then cut to Hal and Arisia flying in the skies. At this time in the GL books Arisia was no longer a Green Lantern and the whole Hal's a pedophile thing gets joked at by Arisia but Hal adamantly states he loves Olivia Reynolds now. (Who?) 

Arisia just replies to that with "Oh suuuuuuure you do, that's why you sent your other ex-girlfriend off to get killed."



Yeah it's Parallax or something like that, I think?

Back at the hospital the Doctor and Nurse see the place has become a path of destruction and run to Nik who they hear is flat lining. But after a minute or two of trying to resuscitate him...

 

Legs in the DCU as we see can heal from any injury! ....Except you Babs, sorry.

After checking in to see if Carol  was at Ferris Aircrafts who direct Hal to a resort Carol's staying in, where she hasn't checked in in the last two days Hal gets worried and goes to hear about the killings in the area, worrying about Carol's life.

So the coroner shows Hal what one of the bodies is like....

 

Carol it seems has gone off to stay with one of her friends Linda, thus her missing from the hotel.



And the Predator comes a calling!                   

Linda escapes, getting to her car and driving away but crashing a bit after from the panic though she survives and Lissik doesn't chase after her.

Meanwhile Nik finally went home to see his family now that he was cleared from the hospital but finds his sister and mother both dead and his Uncle nowhere to be found. I'm also sparing you folks from a downright creepy page showing his sister's body.

 

 

His brothers pop out of the building and they're all in a crazy episode and attack Nik, cutting off his arms.


Meanwhile Hal has also been going to look into the murders and to question one of the husbands.

 



Now to finally find out what the heck is up with all the murders and their happy husbands...



 

So, yeah. Lissik's been having sex with the husbands, controlling their "minds" and killing their wives for fluid. The men have also been transformed into Lissik's super strong lackeys. Kinda odd though that Lissik can apparently transform a man on purpose, hard to tell if the men are counted as New Bloods or if they're some odd variant the Parasites can control if they so chose.

Now Hal and Nik finally meet, both concerned over the murders with Nik particularly since his family was killed..

 

Hal and Nik go off to find the cause of everything and manage to find Carol (and her friends who found her crashed from earlier.)

 

Yeah just to point out Nik of course has his regenerative powers but also some enhanced strength plus his own talent of being a good shot with throwing weapons like knives.





Oh Hal, you're so....you.



Just when Hal and Nik are preparing to round up Nik gets a glimpse of one of the transformed men who is his missing Uncle Kina. But before the two can stop them the men vanish.



 


His connections with LA are what I believe led to him among the other New Bloods forming the later Blood Pack mini (never did read it though)

I'll admit I still have no clue why he chose Nightblade despite in an unposted page he says it's a very fitting name for himself.

Kinda surprised he wasn't used much after the Bloodlines event, alongside Ressurection Man he's one of the few DC characters you could butcher on panel for sight gags without having to kill them off (Nik was nearly unkillable).                                                          

Comments

[okkult3000]

Nightblade: Nineties name, or the Ninetiesest name?

[shanejayell]

He needs a outfit like Penance's with blades sticking out all over, THEN he's be super nineties.

[pyrotwilight]

Yeah, right now he just seems to be trying to pull some awesome from the Asian martial artists of days gone by.

[icon_uk]

Needs more "blood" to be truly Nineties...

[thatnickguy]

NEEDS MOAR POUCHES.

[shanejayell]

Yeah, bones don't cut that way. *lol* Tho I assume his biology must have changed a LOT to explain the healing anyway.

[darkblade]

Isn't he the guy who cut his own arm off in Linkara's Bloodpack review?

[shanejayell]

Yup, with a dinky little blade. BONES DO NOT CUT THAT WAY. *lol*

[psychopathicus_rex]

What ethnicity is Nik, anyway? I'm assuming Native American, but I'm not seeing much here to back that up one way or another, except the name.
Yeah, Lissik being able to INTENTIONALLY give people superpowers is a bit of an anomaly here. Normally, they're just concerned with humans as food - they see the superpowers that sometimes result from their feeding merely as an annoying hindrance to their plans.
And wow, those seduction/transformation scenes are cree-py.

[pyrotwilight]

He's called a "Chinese-American regenerating martial artist, survived Mongul's destruction of Coast City" in the last of the Bloodlines annuals for clarity's sake.

[psychopathicus_rex]

'Nik Malak'? Doesn't sound particularly Chinese to me.

[icon_uk]

The Taoist Taijitu symbol (though seeming to be missing the important "inverse dots"... I'm sure there's a proper name for those so my apologies to Taoist students amongst us) in his house suggests an oriental heritage. (It's more than the poster a student might have just to be hip)

On the other hand, a quick google suggests that Malak is an Arabic surname. Perhaps his family is mixed race, or he gained the name from a stepfather or the like.

[psychopathicus_rex]

Perhaps the writer hadn't come up with a definite background for him, and just wanted him to be some variety of 'foreign-American'.

[pyrotwilight]

His last name is Mayak, not sure if that makes any real difference.

[icon_uk]

It probably does. (It also means I shouldn't try to google foreign names at 8am!)

Kina and Lori are also not exactly oriental names AFAIK.

[auggie18]

Huh. I actually like this character. Too bad he'll never show up again, outside of that short lived "reality tv" thingie he was in. Seems pretty neat, if a bit over-90s.

[wizardru]

Oh, he showed up with the rest of Bloodpack in Infinite Crisis...TO DIE. Of course, he could be easily resurrected...but he was, in theory, vaporized by Superboy-Prime's heat vision.

[auggie18]

SAD FACE!

He should come back! I love it when people redeem 90s characters! Like he-who-shall-not-be-named does!

[wizardru]

Oh, I don't think he's unusable. I think a lot of the Bloodlines characters were lame, but several had potential. And not all of them are dead, but most of them are...and the ones not murdered by Superboy-Prime were more recently maimed or murdered by Prometheus.

Apparently 'Bloodpack' is another way to spell 'Cannon Fodder'.

[icon_uk]

Lissick creating metahumans I think has to be a separate power of her own, as IIRC the other victims gained their powers because their own metagene was activated by something in the parasite's bite.

The powers the New Bloods developed were their own and happened at random. The Annual that introduces Sparx mentions that metagene powers usually being reflective at some level of the personality of the person, and the catalyst that activates it). This seems to be something Lissik is deliberately causing in them.

[thelazyreader]

Why the heck would Hal pick some random cocky vigilante kid as his backup?

And Hal was simply pathetic in his handling of Lissik. Couldn't he have just trapped her in a big green cell or something?

[icon_uk]

Because Lissik seems able to exert control over men, she was screwing (if you'll pardon the term) up his ability to concentrate.

[halloweenjack]

I wonder if this is where Garth Ennis got the idea for Nightfist, a pseudovigilante that showed up early in Hitman (he was really in it to steal drugs and money from crooks). Nightfist's tagline was "He will hit you with his fist!" (although he really used fist-shaped extensions on his bracers)