This weekend I read the 3-issue Velocity miniseries from 1995, by Kurt Busiek and Anthony Chun. I’m not terribly familiar with the character, having read only the Pilot Season one-shot from 2007. I haven’t read any Cyberforce or anything else she’s appeared in, since I basically ignored Image back in the 1990s. (I was a DC snob at the time, and only made exceptions for Groo the Wanderer and the occasional licensed book.)
What struck me right away was that this was not the character I remembered from Pilot Season. This Velocity was shy, timid, and always followed her first instinct: to run away. I was also annoyed by the male/female protector/protected dynamic that started out with Heatwave (no relation) and shifted to Savage Dragon in issue #2. It’s one thing if your lead is the protector, but if your lead is the protected and supposed to be the hero?
I kept reading, though, and realized that this miniseries was about how Velocity grows up and becomes the capable hero I read in about in the Pilot Season book.
She’s put in a situation where she can’t just run away, and can’t rely on other people to shield her. She’s cornered, and has to turn and fight. Near the end of issue #2 she begins taking her fate into her own hands. By the end of the story, she leads her pursuer to a battleground more suited to her and defeats him on her own. More importantly, learns that she can.
Compared to the Flash
The emphasis on running away reminded me of Flash: Rebirth, which has made a point of characterizing Barry Allen’s life (unfairly, but he is depressed right now) as a series of choices from which he ran away. Both miniseries are about taking a character who is not ready to be a hero (Barry with his not-quite acknowledged death wish, Carin with her inability to overcome fear) and moving them to where the need to be in order to become better heroes. Read the rest of this entry »
