One of the mistakes I made back when I first started this re-read series back in the halcyon days of 2019 was not actually starting at the beginning. I'm not sure why this happened, exactly. All I can think of is that my eagerness to jump into the deep end of the pool made me forget there was a short introduction to Gen 13 in another book. And as someone who had just one year earlier barfed up over 2,500 words about Deathmate, that just makes me hang my head in shame. How in the name of intra-company crossovers did I forget Deathmate Black was the first appearance of 4/5ths of the team?
Let's correct that oversight.
For those unaware (and unwilling to read my ramblings on it linked above), Deathmate was a massive crossover event between Valiant and Image which did not work out the way it was originally envisioned for a variety of reasons. Ostensibly, the idea was to showcase a slew of characters from each studio's catalog to readers who might be unfamiliar with one studio or the other. In principle, this was solid. On paper, it was a bunch of ink spilled with almost no actual story behind it, because Valiant's writers had no idea who the Image characters were, and vice versa. With so many characters and only a limited number of pages, it was impossible to showcase what was exciting or interesting about any of them, or delve into their histories or personalities. It wasn't even clear where in the respective studios' continuity this was all taking place. People were introduced on one page and killed a few pages later, existing as little more than a name and some artwork. In the end, a massive reset button gets pressed, everyone goes back to their respective timelines, and nothing wound up mattering except all the money comic book shops had dumped into pre-orders for books they were neither able to sell nor return for credit.
A lot of friendly local comic book shops took a colossal kick in the nuts because of Deathmate, and the industry was never the same.
Nevertheless, Deathmate Black is, technically, the first appearance of four out of the five protagonists from Gen 13, so if I'm going to do this right, this is where I have to start. Welcome, everyone, to the first appearances of Fairchild, Grunge, Burnout, and Freefall:
Now unlike a lot of other characters used in this crossover, we had no background info on "The Gen 13" as they're referred to here. They were still just an idea fermenting in the imaginations of Brandon Choi, Jeff Scott Campbell, and Jim Lee. The blue-skinned woman (named "Mother May I") remarks that they've been 'activated', Fairchild says they have their powers back, Grunge comments about how great it is to cut loose again, and Freefall remarks that she hopes the suppressors don't come back online before their mission is over.
But, again, we don't have a clue what any of this means. Sure enough, a couple pages later, and their power suppressors reactivate, turning the four of them back into ordinary humans. Grunge, Freefall, and Burnout are all killed; only Fairchild escapes. She shows up later to lead a different group to the place they're looking for, but since she doesn't have her powers any longer, they leave her behind before commencing the attack.
Following an enormous battle in which a slew of heroes and villains all get wasted, the good guys emerge victorious and seemingly set at least this particular part of the world back as it should be, leaving The Gen 13, with their now-restored powers, in control of the area:
The book closes with Fairchild, now the de facto leader of The Gen 13, watching as Union flies off to restore order somewhere else, ruminating on Ripclaw's last words about success in this fight having the power to change both the past and the future, and how she'd be just fine if that happened . . . .
Like I said before, nothing that happens in Deathmate winds up actually happening, so everything we just saw gets shunted over into a quasi-alternate continuity of events that transpired before they didn't. The Gen 13 depicted here are not actually the characters we're eventually going to meet in 1994, despite sharing the same names and character designs.
Nothing really matters.
Ironically, with the resurgence in the comics collectibles market and the widening search for key books in recent years, Deathmate Black has managed to claw its way out of the bargain bins and become a minor commodity amongst people who collect first appearances, as this truly is the debut of Gen 13, even if it doesn't technically count since the story undoes itself in the end.
Like seemingly everything else in the world of 90s comics, it all comes back to Deathmate. It's the black hole of the hobby I can't seem to escape, even with three decades between its release and now. I suppose past truly is prologue after all. But if our past is Deathmate, we're truly screwed.
Sorry 'bout that . . . .