Issue(s): Dark Angel #11, Dark Angel #12
Cover Date: Jun-Jul 93
Title: "Assassination part three" / "Assassination part four"
Credits:
Bernadette Jaye - Writer
Salvador Larroca - Penciler
David Hine - Inker
Bambos Georgiou - Editor

Review/plot:
The cover of issue #11 claims that it is a Mys-Tech Wars tie-in, but that is not the case. The dates in the indicia for both of these issues are also a month later than the dates on the cover, so maybe the idea was originally for issue #11 to be a Mys-Tech Wars tie-in. However, issue #11's cover does accurately depict the events of the issue (to the degree that it depicts anything). It doesn't help that Dark Angel's actual tie-in with Mys-Tech Wars, in issue #10, was also part two of this four part Assassination story, and it actually had very little to do with Mys-Tech Wars. I was very confused when i tried to read last issue and especially issue #11 here as part of Mys-Tech Wars. It's slightly less confusing when read without trying to figure out what it has to do with Mys-Tech Wars. These issues also benefit from the art of Salvador Larroca, who will be the artist for the remainder of the series, parallel to his run on Death's Head II. He starts here before his run on Death's Head (and that series will run a little longer) and on these issues the art is a little rougher looking. But i could be biased due to the erratic nature of this story, which just makes everything confusing.

The story is relatively easy to summarize. Mys-Tech decided to try to assassinate Dark Angel, and then decided against it, but their assassination program is still running and they can't stop it. So in these issues Dark Angel continues to fend off assassination attempts and eventually contacts her dead father (and former Mys-Tech member) to get the password needed to shut the program down. In the process she gets some help from the Wyrd Sisters...

...and three of the X-Men: Psylocke, Wolverine, and Cyclops.

The threats include a squad of Mys-Tech's robot Psycho-Warriors.

And a giant Doomsday robot named Safehouse who also takes control of the world's nuclear missiles.

When Dark Angel disables the assassination program, the missiles are safely returned to their silos, but the robot self-destructs, and is said to take three square miles of London with it and subject "millions of people to lethal levels of radiation". The fall-out (ha ha) of that is not really explored in future issues. We just have one more storyline after this one before the book is canceled.

Before the robot was stopped, it publicly demanded that Shevaun Haldane, Dark Angel's civilian identity, be handed over. So that will cause problems for Shevaun in the next arc, sort of (but again, not really).

Along the way, while Dark Angel is questing for her dead father, she has the first encounter with the Anti-Body that she was warned about in the first part of this storyline, and which will become the major threat for the next story arc.

She winds up having to suck Anti-Body into the pocket dimension that her costume serves as a portal to.

I (hopefully) have summarized the events of these issue succinctly, but the actual plot delivery feels a lot more convoluted. I found it genuinely difficult to decipher what was going on at times. Bernadette Jaye has a tendency to throw head tripping concepts at us - the Wyrd Sisters, the Anti-Body and whatever people he's hanging out with in whatever dimension he's in - with little explanation. In the right context that could be a lot of fun, but in this story it muddles what should be a pretty straightforward plot about Mys-Tech's out of control assassination program. I admit to being thrown off due to the fact that my first read of this stuff was with a mind of trying to figure out the connection to Mys-Tech Wars, but even with that taken into account everything here just seems too busy and unfocused. It doesn't help that out of all of this wave of Marvel UK books, it has the least coherent core concept. I'm not even clear what Dark Angel would be doing if she weren't getting interrupted by these threats. This book is also the worst when it comes to guest appearances. From a certain point of view it's nice that Dark Angel has seemingly formed an actual (one-way) friendship with the X-Men, so that when they appear here it doesn't feel contrived. But from a basic plot mechanics point of view, it is very contrived. Psylocke just happens to detect some psychic distress from Dark Angel a continent away, and they come running, and then they suddenly decide it's time to leave, but then they're still around next issue after all.

Quality Rating: D+

Historical Significance Rating: 1

Chronological Placement Considerations: I'm placing this directly after Mys-Tech Wars since the assassination attempts are continuing from Dark Angel's tie-in with that event.

References:

• While questing for her father, Dark Angel uses the cloak of invisibility that she got in Dark Angel #9.

Crossover: N/A

Continuity Insert? N

My Reprint: N/A