‘Commanders In Crisis #1’ (review)

Written by Steve Orlando
Art by Davide Tinto
Published by Image Comics

I am glad I read the foreword to Commanders In Crisis #1, a new Image series from creative team Steve Orlando and Davide Tinto. Dan DiDio, the deposed co-publisher of DC Comics, sets up that you’re about to read an all-new story about a team of superheroes you’ve never met, in a world you don’t know.

Who are these heroes? The issue ladles out Crisis Command:

• Originator, whose Scarlet Witch-like powers alter reality
• Sawbones, an “action surgeon” who can see people’s entire physical conditions
• Prizefighter, a bruiser whose strength and invulnerability are powered by crowd adulation
• Seer, who can see into the future, one minute at a time, through quantum mechanics
• Frontier, a mecha-suited genius and overwatch/leader.

But first we find out a bit about the world Crisis Command operates in.

Commanders in Crisis #1 opens on Philadelphia police standing over a dead man, blood drained from his body and a pair of puncture holes on his neck. “We don’t have vampires in Philly,” one detective says.

Wait, this world has vampires in it?

The issue then cuts to Washington, DC, where a Tom Cotton-looking congressman is speechifying about dissolving the United States of America into 52 aligned nation-states.

That’s some real X-Men sounding stuff, right?

In a vein similar to X-Men, Crisis Command’s members are a diverse mix of folks, a veritable rainbow coalition.

A female, Pakistani-American hero. A Latinx, male hero. A Black female hero. And of the two white heroes, at least one of them is queer.

There’s a deeper hook about the team that I won’t spoil, and it adds even more world building.

Also, we haven’t met the bad guys yet, but a conspiracy is afoot. The game begins.

All I’ll say is that it all ties into a crisis the likes of which the old DC head Dan DiDio just loves.