DV8: Neighborhood Threat

DV8 (1996-1999) (single issues) #1-6

by Warren Ellis

The super powered team of DV8, with such members as Threshold, Bliss, Frostbite, Evo, Sublime, Powerhaus, and Copycat, the team tries to adjust to the world outside the Genesis project. Can any one of them interact with a population they've been trained to regard as inferiors, especially with their myriad social and psychological dysfunctions? Can they still function as a team in real society while under Ivana's control, especially with their leaders - brother and sister Threshold and Bliss - are more screwed up than any of them?

Genres: Comics, Graphic Novels, Comic Book, Graphic Novels Comics, Superheroes

176 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 2002

About the author

Warren Ellis is the award-winning writer of graphic novels like TRANSMETROPOLITAN, FELL, MINISTRY OF SPACE and PLANETARY, and the author of the NYT-bestselling GUN MACHINE and the “underground classic” novel CROOKED LITTLE VEIN, as well as the digital short-story single DEAD PIG COLLECTOR. His newest book is the novella NORMAL, from FSG Originals, listed as one of Amazon’s Best 100 Books Of 2016.

The movie RED is based on his graphic novel of the same name, its sequel having been released in summer 2013. IRON MAN 3 is based on his Marvel Comics graphic novel IRON MAN: EXTREMIS. He is currently developing his graphic novel sequence with Jason Howard, TREES, for television, in concert with HardySonBaker and NBCU, and continues to work as a screenwriter and producer in film and television, represented by Angela Cheng Caplan and Cheng Caplan Company. He is the creator, writer and co-producer of the Netflix series CASTLEVANIA, recently renewed for its third season, and of the recently-announced Netflix series HEAVEN’S FOREST.

He’s written extensively for VICE, WIRED UK and Reuters on technological and cultural matters, and given keynote speeches and lectures at events like dConstruct, ThingsCon, Improving Reality, SxSW, How The Light Gets In, Haunted Machines and Cognitive Cities.

Warren Ellis has recently developed and curated the revival of the Wildstorm creative library for DC Entertainment with the series THE WILD STORM, and is currently working on the serialising of new graphic novel works TREES: THREE FATES and INJECTION at Image Comics, and the serialised graphic novel THE BATMAN’S GRAVE for DC Comics, while working as a Consulting Producer on another television series.

A documentary about his work, CAPTURED GHOSTS, was released in 2012.

Recognitions include the NUIG Literary and Debating Society’s President’s Medal for service to freedom of speech, the EAGLE AWARDS Roll Of Honour for lifetime achievement in the field of comics & graphic novels, the Grand Prix de l’Imaginaire 2010, the Sidewise Award for Alternate History and the International Horror Guild Award for illustrated narrative. He is a Patron of Humanists UK. He holds an honorary doctorate from the University of Essex.

Warren Ellis lives outside London, on the south-east coast of England, in case he needs to make a quick getaway.

Reviews

[Chad · Rating 3 out of 5]

Full of 90's angst and decadence. The Deviants are the flip side to Gen13, a Wildstorm book about some superpowered kids that escaped from a secret facility. The Deviants didn't escape. They were raised to look out only for themselves, completely amoral. Now their leader coerces them to go on missions, plying them with sex, money, and drugs. Their is pretty much nothing to like in the first few issues. all the characters are huge a-holes. This is early Warren Ellis before he hit his stride. But halfway through, things start to change a little bit. The kids start to look out for one another. The writing becomes more complex and the kids begin to grow on you. Humberto Ramos's art is very chaotic and sometimes very difficult to follow. But if you're a fan of Ramos, it still has his style. His panel construction just isn't as well defined.

[Don · Rating 3 out of 5]

One of the first WildStorm books written by Warren Ellis, and surprisingly decent. "Surprisingly" because it's a spinoff of the never-very-deep teen comic Gen13, with nearly all of the characters beginning the book almost entirely repellant: They're concerned with little more than sex, vast quantities of drugs, and all the decadence that money can buy - with nary a thought as to the ethics of the missions they're asked to do in order to keep it. It's clearly Ellis's super-powered take on inner-city gangs, employed by adults even more morally bankrupt by themselves, and the first few issues are actually quite hard to get through based on how entirely unpleasant all the characters are.

Interestingly, though, about halfway through the book the teenagers start questioning their leaders, and start making choices based on something more than pure hedonism, laziness and greed. As it becomes clear that they're just pawns to be deployed and used by their adult superiors, they come to realize the only ones they can count on are each other, and their attitudes begin to change as a result. By the time the book ended, I was beginning to really care about these kids! But of course, at that point Warren left, and I don't have enough faith in the subsequent authors to carry on with future issues....

Still, a book I enjoyed far more of than I was expecting!

[Andy Horton · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very dark indeed anti-(super)hero story in a world of black-and-grey morality, with the tension being not between good and evil but between the better and worse sides of the heroes' own natures.

[Michael Emond · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not your average comic book. Definitely trying to be Rated R. I think this is an early Ellis effort and he hasn't found his narrative legs yet. There really isn't a solid structure to the book - some cool ideas but no plot or story to tell after 8 issues. The main problem is the person who put the group together and her motives are never explained. Is she evil? Is she insane? Not sure after I finished the volume.
If I had to describe it - 8 mutants with very odd powers are brought together to form a team that does what the leader Ivana tells them to do. They are all outcasts trying to come together and maybe learn to be a family but they have some real destructive personalities so it makes becoming friends hard even though they are tired of feeling alone. Kind of a teen drama mixed in with super heroes.

The art by Humberto Ramos is fun - maybe a tad over the top cartoony but I liked it.

But in the end, despite some cute stories/missions the chaotic nature of the premise (and how ill defined it is) make this a collection I will soon forget about and never recommend.

[Matt Sabonis · Rating 3 out of 5]

So it's...okay. Ellis was clearly bored somewhere in the third issue, but even bored Ellis is interesting. Ramos's art, unfortunately, is at its messiest.

[John]

This is a group of amoral hedonistic superheroes. The DV8s (Deviates) are an early entrance to the decadent superhero model and perhaps a bit too edgelording. It's a spin-off book to Gen13. The Gen13 escaped, DV8 didn't.

However, they start to grow and form a family unit as time goes on.

[Max Z · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ramos...

[Aidan]

Humberto Ramos is an insane penciler from an insane era. People’s individual tits were bigger than their waist, and their fists bigger than their head.

[Roberto Diaz · Rating 2 out of 5]

Really "dv8s" from what I was hoping for

Context: after the success of the X-Men for damecades in the comic book industry, the then new Image Comics launched many "Team" Books: Youngblood, Brigade, Bloodstryke, Cyberforce, Wildcats. All trying to "out-edgelord" each other, showing as the more extreme of the x-tremes. One of those books was GEN 13, another team book of youn mutan... I mean GEN active teenagers that are used by an organization as a kind of task force. Created by Jim Lee and Brandon "the luckiest guy in comics" Choi, it has in its pages another sub grouo, the deviants,a more amoral, more edgier and lets say "ugly" version of the GEN 13 team. DV8 is abook about that team.

This is not a recommendation. This book is the worst point of entry for the Wildstorm GEN13 world. Apart from a two page introduction that is more like an intend explanation by the writer, a then new and very green Warren Ellis (Moon Knight, Injection, Ministry of Space) he tries to take these characters and make then a 90's derranged and lost youth team. Set up in a neat penthhouse by the team sponsor (which intentions are never fully explained or resolved in this volume), this team ia put together and cohersed with the promise of sex, drugs, alcohol, and money, to be thrown in mission that seem suididal at times. But guess what, in the whole volume only two or three of the six issues have what can be described as missions, and the rest of the pages are dedicade to the dereangement of the team (not really being a team) slowly gettinf to be kind of ok with each other, with not really a definite idea of what the story wants.

For fans of Warren Ellis this is a way of reading one of his earliest works, while he still didnt find his voice, and for the now mexican legend Humberto Ramos, his raw 90's amerimanga style, that leaves much to be desired in my opinion, but after this went to Crimson an so on perfecting it to his more cartoony but well define actual art.

My surprise was the story of the middle of the book in which a character of the team with an ability to sense and transform feelings into mass, connects with a girl that is dying from an overdose and manage to save her witj the aid of a teamate. This ability shows up on another chapter with a different outcome and surprise. But The art in that chapter was way more defined and I feel would have suited to the whole book more than the predominant Ramos render.


Overall, read if you are fan of the creators involved, or you manage to get a borrowed copy or on the cheap, mine was bought on abarhain bin on a bookstore, so it didnt hurt tjat much.

[47Time · Rating 4 out of 5]

Now I remember why I never read this - the artwork sucks ass. When you get past that, you reach the characters. The first issue is just an intro for the following trips through examples of the most self-destructive mess people do to themselves and to others. With all the drugs, violence and sexual deviations thrown at the reader, the Deviants start to look like moral angels.

The Deviants are a band of SPBs handled by Ivana Baiul. They're hardly a team, since most of them prefer to attack their opponents single-handedly. They're also at each other's throats in their down time. Will they learn to play together?

After a failed mission to recover an alien, they are tasked with recruiting some SPBs even more screwed up and homicidal than they are. Their leader is so messed up he sleeps with the girls on the team and forces the boys to watch. Even the Deviants don't agree with pedophilia and rape. After killing the SPBs, they demand answers from Ivana. Surprisingly, she nonchalantly tells them that she fully expected them to behave like they did.

Frostbite and Evo's little walkabout is interrupted by a drive-by. After killing the men responsible, they meet Memorie, an SPB who later tries to kill herself for being abused by the members of a street gang. The gangbangers get buried and she gets saved. Yes, some of the Deviants have heroes within them. They confirm this when one of their own is captured and the others threaten Ivana into allowing them to save the captured member.

Their leader is not integrated into the group, though. His sister is even worse when she incestuously manipulates him with her power into attempting to take control of the group. It doesn't make a lot of sense to collect only the first 6 issues, considering this cliffhanger.

[Cole Albinder · Rating 3 out of 5]

Just finished reading this trade and thought I’d give my thoughts.

I didn’t grow up with Gen 13 or DV8, though I have read some of Gen 13 recently and it has its charms in spite of not aging that well. DV8–at least in this series—definitely has more to it than what’s on the surface. There’s quite a bit to like here and it has some twisted characters (Sideways Bob being a standout) and plotlines, though it doesn’t feel quite as sharp as I thought it would be. Again, it’s from the 90’s, but regardless it was enjoyable in spite of its issues.

I had a somewhat similar experience reading Ellis’s StormWatch: quite a lot of good when it comes to storylines and some of the dialogue, but also some dated dialogue and characters here-and-there. Have yet to read The Authority, Planetary or The Wild Storm quite yet, but so far the only time Ellis’s writing sparked from what I’ve seen is on Castlevania. Still, he was probably finding his footing at this point (and before being revealed as a terrible person) but I’m up for checking out his other WildStorm work.

Anyone else read this one and have similar thoughts? And is the rest of DV8 after Ellis leaves (but before Gods and Monsters) worth reading?

[Joe Informatico]

My first of what would be many interactions with the writing of Warren Ellis. Although at the time much was made of the unusual proportions in Humberto Ramos' art (which I actually appreciated, as they set him apart from the inescapable legions of McFarlane/Liefeld wannabes of the early 90s), Ellis distinguished himself even then for the depth of his compelling characterizations and his interesting plots. Also, Ellis was one of the few superhero comic writers of the early 90s with a genuine (if often macabre) sense of humour. His characters were interesting human beings first, and cooler-than-cool badasses second.

DV8, a spin-off of Wildstorm's Gen13 title, was in many ways the logical conclusion of Dark Age superhero titles. A group of sullen teens with sordid pasts, receive superpowers and are placed into the care of a ruthless women who vacillates between laissez-faire and tyrannical oppressiveness, her pseudo-fascist boytoy and a bona fide (but darkly hilarious) sociopath. They aren't heroes. They're not really villains, either. They act generally out of their own selfish impulses and attempts to actually look out for each other seem doomed to failure.

[Filip Różanek · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gang of superpowered jerks who care only about themselves, slowly begins to realize that their employees treat them as expentable and in rather mean world the only people they can and should count on are themselves.

Thsi was suprisingly good read, I was expecting much less from early Image, but Warren Ellis didn't fail to deliver. It was interesting to watch how he takes what started as bunch of typical 90s protagonists and forces them to realize they can either grow themselves some moral backbone or die. This book puts suprising emphasis on caracters and observes as they slowly form into a bit more decent people. At the end of the day DV8 are just a bunch of kids. Horribly messed up kids, but still as much lost in and confused by the world as everybody else at their age.

[Jason Collins · Rating 4 out of 5]

There isn't much by Ellis I have not read. This early take on the non superhero, superhero was a lot of fun to read. It was one of the first comics I read for the writing, and afterwards that became the only reason to pick up a comic. Not sure if that's good. After Ellis a poor story in a comic shall not be tolerated.

[James · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting stories but I don't like the disproportionate art.