I was recently looking through old scans and ran into an image of Team Turmoil. Readers from the 1990s will recognize them as a group of generic villains who would show up anytime Mark Waid needed the Flash to have a short battle as part of a larger story about something else.
The funny thing is that their costumes reminded me of another team — a much more developed team with actual characters: Dynamo 5.
I know it’s just the color scheme and the cut-out letter/number, but it’s still kind of eerie!
Dynamo 5 has actually had some of the best super-hero stories I’ve read during the last few years. The concept is simple: After Captain Dynamo dies, his widow tracks down his illegitimate children, each of whom has inherited one of his powers, and insists that they take over as the city’s protectors.
Jay Faerber’s work at Image has been fantastic. If you only know him from his disastrous run on The Titans a decade ago, it’s worth checking out some of his creator-owned stuff. He’s been carving out a sort of “Faerberverse” of related characters such as Dynamo 5, the Noble family from Noble Causes, the Firebirds, and Gemini.
The first Dynamo 5 collection is only about $10 even without a discount, so it’s a good place to start. Volume 4 comes out next month, and will catch up with everything that’s been printed. The series is on hiatus now, moving from a monthly schedule to a series-of-miniseries, with Dynamo 5: Sins of the Father coming out this summer.
