Five Too Few: Dynamo 5 and the Legacy in Need of a Renaissance

For as long as I can remember, I’ve loved superhero comics. And yes, I’m talking mostly about the mainstreamers –– Batman and Robin, Green Arrow, Superman, and Wonder Woman. I also have a pretty strong affinity to many of the underdog champions, like Metamorpho, Elongated Man, and Black Lightning, who aren’t as well known by the masses. And I don’t mean for this opening paragraph to be so DC-centric, but I don’t marvel as much at Stan Lee’s breed the way I used to in the ’90s; back then, you couldn’t tear me away from any stories starring the amazing Spider-man, uncanny X-Men, or my personal favorite Marvel misfit of the time, Ghost Rider.

One thing I’ve always been skeptical about as a somewhat closed-minded teenager reading comics in between classic works of literature was any superhero from some other universe outside the main solar systems of DC and Marvel. I certainly tried a few titles: Valiant’s Ninjak, Dark Horse’s Hellboy, and Image’s WildC.A.T.s and Cyberforce. They all seemed to center around pale imitations of A-listers and popular superteams, with the exception of Todd McFarlane’s Spawn, of course, which was badass in story, art, and originality.

It wasn’t until many years later that I opened my mind to the idea that cool heroes could exist outside the worlds of DC and Marvel. After joining the Broken Frontier staff, I conducted and wrote up an interview with comics and TV writer Jay Faerber, who was penning a crime series I enjoyed immensely called Near Death, that I found out about two other superhero-oriented series he worked on from 2002 to 2009 –– Noble Causes and Dynamo 5.

Even though I’m only two trades into the Noble Causes franchise, I’m already hooked, although not nearly as much as when I started reading Dynamo 5. I’ve read all five trade paperbacks, all in the course of a couple of months. See, after I met Jay at NYCC and had him sign my copy of Near Death #1, I snatched up a copy of Dynamo 5, Volume One: Post-Nuclear Family and turned it over to read the back cover, and I was immediately intrigued by the story’s originality:

He was the world’s greatest hero, but Captain Dynamo was not a faithful husband. Now he’s dead and his family is trying to piece their lives together. As his enemies descend on his unprotected city, Captain Dynamo’s widow rounds up his five illegitimate children, each of whom have inherited one of their father’s super-powers. Can these total strangers come to terms with their powers, their father’s legacy and each other as total chaos erupts?

With Noble Causes, Jay blends the superhero mythos with soap opera sentimentality, which all other action/adventure books of the superhero sort steer clear of. But by embracing it the way he does, Jay allows us into the everyday lives of this highly unlikeable but strangely fascinating family; plus, we see it all through the unbiased eyes of Liz Donnelly, the widow of the late Race Noble, much the way readers view the world of The Great Gatsby though the eyes of Nick Carraway. What Jay does best in Dynamo 5, however, is shift the focus onto five young strangers-turned-family members trying to cope with the knowledge that their father was Captain Dynamo, a Superman with somewhat less of a moral code when it came to extramarital affairs, and that they have now collectively inherited his role as the defenders of Tower City since his death.

When I had picked up this first volume of Dynamo 5, I honestly wasn’t in the mood for another superhero title; I’d been trying to round out my comics knowledge with indie titles, ones funded through crowdfunding platforms like Indiegogo and Kickstarter, and old crime and horror comics as research for my own upcoming series Siren’s Calling. But when I opened that gorgeous cover by Mahmud A. Asrar, I got through Post-Nuclear Family in a single sitting. As a matter of fact, I made it through each of the other four volumes in the same manner –– one shot, one after another. I was that engrossed in the lives of these teens-turned-teammates in this fresh take on the Teen Titans. This was not your typical superhero story, but rather something fiercely different and very similar to the graphic literature I’d been consuming. It fit right in with my research, and every book gave me tons of enjoyment, too.

And then I reached the end of Dynamo 5, Volume 5: Sins of the Father, and saw that the series had come to an end.

But the story wasn’t over.

How could it be over? One of the characters I’d seen mature from a visor-wearing Cyclops to an Incredible Hulk (sans the skin tone and Rob Liefeldian muscles) lies on the ledge of the dark side and I needed to know what was going to happen to him. But there was nothing more to the story except a holiday special. No Volume Six. No closure. Nothing.

I’m not sure why Dynamo 5 ceased its run after its fifth volume. There had been talk of another miniseries called “Certain Death,” but the last anyone heard of that was from Jay’s old blog back in May, 2011 and a few pages illustrated by “Sins of the Father” artist Julio Brilho that’s posted on Jay’s Facebook page. Aside from that, the series seems to have remained “aborted.”

Until now, perhaps?

Recently, some smaller press publishers have reinstated lots of b-side superheroes like X-O Manowar for active duty. I gave some of them the benefit of a read, and none of them resonated with me the way Bridget, Hector, Gage, Olivia, Spencer, and even Maddie, the widow of Captain Dynamo, had. Don’t get me wrong, Valiant’s Harbinger, Dark Horse’s Ghost, and even DC’s Swamp Thing and Animal Man are all great action/adventure stories, but that’s where it stops for each of them. The kind of substance and humanity that Jay penned into every issue of Dynamo 5 is what’s lacking in just about every superhero story today. Now maybe substance and humanity don’t sell many books today, but perhaps what’s more important is having an audience that cares enough to help Bridget here lift Dynamo 5 to new heights and finally resurrect it from “Certain Death”.

It’s kinda funny, but when I left Jay’s setup at the Image Comics booth at NYCC, I handed him a calling card for my book Crowdfunding for Filmmakers and said something along the lines of “if you ever want to crowdfund another few issues of Near Death, let me know and I’ll help you do it through the crowd.” But while his tale of Markham, the hit man who has a near death experience and vows to save a life for every one he’s taken, was compelling from first issue to final, the ending in Near Death #11 felt finished and complete. Markham lives in my head, and I know exactly what he’s doing, and where he’s doing it, too. But the kids from Dynamo 5? They’re in a limbo of my mind, an unfinished chapter that’s perhaps yet to be written that the fans would love to read in a single sitting, and once again become further invested in a superhero story with more substance and humanity than any other currently on the racks.

Or am I the only one who thinks this way?

I can’t be the only one.

Can I?

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C’mon, Dynamo 5 fans, speak up in the Comments below and let me know your thoughts, and whether or not you’d love to see a Volume 6 hit the comic shelves from Image soon.