Obsessively putting our comics in chronological order since 1985.
| 1993-03-01 00:10:10 |
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Terror Inc. #9-10
Issue(s): Terror Inc. #9, Terror Inc. #10
Cover Date: Mar-Apr 93
Title: "Aggressive portfolio" / "Defensive portfolio"
Credits:
D.G. Chichester - Writer
Richard Pace - Penciler
Jason Temujin - Inker
Tom Daning - Assistant Editor
Marc McLaurin - Editor
Review/plot:
Terror is hired by a Mr. Braniff to find out who murdered his daughter. The forensic evidence seems to suggest that Wolverine was the killer. So Terror engages a plan that has him attack what seems to be a SHIELD convoy to acquire the daughter's body, and then he goes to his contact, Boneyard (mentioned last issue), to acquire body parts.
Curious what the rest of her clientele are like. There can't be many people who attach body parts to themselves. I guess it's more general interest voodoo enthusiasts.
From Boneyard, Terror gets his own claw arm. Boneyard says that she acquired it from "an unmarked grave nearby what's left of a high tech ", which seems to refer to the skeleton from Wolverine #52.
Terror then locates Wolverine and provokes him into a fight.
The point was for Terror to get some wounds that he can compare to the wounds Braniff's daughter had.
Terror of course still has to deal with the matter of an infuriated Wolverine. The fight results in quite a bit of dismemberment. As Terror is repairing himself, we get a hint about the origin of the metal hand that Terror uses to attach body parts, with reference to a "love".
For all i know that's a reference to something from Terror's Shadowline appearances, but the last i saw in the lettercols, Marvel was still denying that this was the same character as that one.
Terror convinces Wolverine that someone is trying to frame him for a murder, and the two team up to go after the "SHIELD" squad that was transporting Braniff's daughter's corpse. They turn out to really be Hydra agents.
When the head Hydra agent threatens some local police, Terror makes a deal with him, promising to not kill him if he'll let the officers go. The Hydra agent agrees. But Terror didn't promise not to tear his lips off to find out who was behind the framing.
And the answer is that it was Braniff.
Terror's new lips gain him access to Braniff's base. It turns out that Braniff was a Hydra agent, the supervisory officer behind the Hydra weapons program seen during the events of Wolverine: Inner Fury. Braniff is trying to frame Wolverine as a way to redeem himself for the failure of that program.
Failing that, Braniff kills himself.
A Wolverine guest appearance of course smacks of commercialism...
...but there's no doubt this book needed the boost, and it's actually a fun little story, with Terror's gruesomeness nicely on display. The tie-in to Chichester's Inner Fury makes Wolverine's appearance feel a little less random.
The next two issues are part of the For Love Nor Money crossover with Luke Cage and Silver Sable. In a set up for that, we see Mikal Drakonmegas, aka Hellfire, who is apparently at a monastery. A Brother Randi asks him to contact Terror to help find the "Carnal Serpent".
It turns out that Randi is working for a Lord Priapus.
Statement of Ownership Total Paid Circulation: Average of Past 12 months = 63,835. Single issue closest to filing date = 51,130.
Quality Rating: C+
Historical Significance Rating: 1
Chronological Placement Considerations: N/A
References:
- No footnote, but Terror's Wolverine claw seems to come from the future Wolverine corpse seen in Wolverine #52.
- Mr. Big and The Whale are from Wolverine: Inner Fury.
Crossover: N/A
Continuity Insert? N
My Reprint: N/A
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Comments
FNORD - in regards to Terror being the same character - this is from the wiki entry on Terror Inc. -
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terror_Inc.
Terror, Inc. editor Marc McLaurin maintained[citation needed] that Shreck and Terror are two different characters. Writer Dan Chichester said, "Shreck was Terror and Terror was Shreck ... but for the fact that Terror got to develop more of a back story as time went on"[2]
The comic books themselves gave no confirmation either way. Eventually, the canonical Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe Horror 2005 confirmed that the two were in fact the same being.[citation needed]
The metal hand is one of the big divergences between Terror Inc and the Shadowline character Shreck. In the Shadowline continuity, he got the metal hand by taking from a guy named Michael Ripley, who was a supporting character in the Powerline series. Here, it's implied to be the hermetically sealed hand of his true love from the medieval-period origin story he picks up.
I was going to call out the name Lord Priapus in a plot about a Carnal Serpent and how they named the guy after an erection disorder. It turns out priapism is named for a Greek god, Priapus, who I certainly never learned about in school.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Priapus (Warning NSFW)
Am I missing something? Why did Terror need to go through this convoluted shtick to see if Wolverine is the murderer? Couldn't he have just found out the murderer's identity by taking one of the victim's eyes or ears?
Only 50,000 issues. Even in direct market only sales, it is hard to imagine this series still kept being published. Marvel was really trying to flood the market with titles, weren't they?
To be fair, they cancelled it after 13 issues- that's pretty quick for a cancellation.
