LIFE
New teen hero adds a good ‘Vibe’ to DC Comics Universe
Brian Truitt, USA TODAY
Updated May 13, 2013, 1:01 p.m. ET
- The 1980s character Vibe stars in his own solo comic book
- Hero was reintroduced in %27Justice League of America%27
- The Detroit teen works to preserve the honor and legacy of his late brother
With a reintroduced teenage superhero, writer Sterling Gates is giving out some good vibes
While other DC Comics series tend toward the dark, Gates’ Vibe book takes an old character from the 1980s Justice League title and lets readers get to know him just as he’s becoming familiar with his new life as a protector
“It’s nice to tell Vibe’s story now,” Gates says. “That character had a lot of baggage in fans’ eyes and we’ve been working really hard to unpack those bags and show people that he’s actually a really great character.”
Geoff Johns debuted the new Vibe earlier this year as a team member in Justice League of America, and kicked off his own series with Arrow TV producer Andrew Kreisberg
A Detroit teen, Cisco Ramon was in the crossfire when the evil Darkseid and his minions from Apokolips attacked the world five years ago, an event that gave Cisco astounding vibration powers and the ability to recognize beings from other dimensions but also claimed the life of his older brother Armando
Now in the present, Cisco has been recruited by the government agency A.R.G.U.S. to act as a “border cop” to help identify possible enemies that could cause a ruckus on Earth
Gates took over the series as writer last month with the third issue. His goal is to tell a hero’s journey with Vibe, he says, as well as “a really nice coming-of-age story for this kid as he learns what it’s like to be a superhero and to really stand by your beliefs and to stand for what you think is right, even when everyone is telling you you’re wrong.”
Available Wednesday in comic shops and digitally, Vibe issue 4 finds Cisco becoming more aware of the superhero world he’s immersed in now and that maybe it’s not all what it’s cracked up to be since A.R.G.U.S. is using him to hunt down possibly innocent beings
“He starts to figure out, well, maybe that’s not the best way to approach these things. And also once we capture these guys, where do they go? No one’s willing to tell me what happens to them or where they go? What’s up with that?” Gates says
“He starts to go down the rabbit hole and discovers some things about A.R.G.U.S. he doesn’t like.”
In the new issue, he finally meets Gypsy, one of the 260-plus folks held in a locked-down A.R.G.U.S. prison called the Circus. (It also contains the Omega Room, a huge vault that houses Darkseid’s daughter and becomes very important in issue 7.)
Back in the ’80s, Gypsy was on the same Detroit-based Justice League group as Vibe, and in the new series their meeting after she escapes the circus becomes a catalyst for the rest of his journey and “a huge, huge part of what we’re doing going forward,” Gates says
“She’s not what she appears to be, and that’s what I really like about her. Her power set revolves around casting illusions and tricking the mind’s eye, but there’s more to her than that.”
Batman appears on the cover of issue 4, though only plays a brief role in Vibe’s overall story,” Gates says. “Because we’re dealing with interdimensional things, the Batman on the cover may not be the Batman you think it’s going to be.”
The dimension-hopping Breacher briefly stops by but will return in later issues as an integral part of both Vibe and Gypsy’s stories, and Gates also gives a glimpse at the personal life of Vibe’s A.R.G.U.S. handler Dale Gunn. A quick scene shows him with his husband, Casey, and how he wants to keep him safe from his day job
“It’s a really nice scene and a new take on an age-old superhero trope,” the writer says. “It reveals a lot about Gunn in a number of ways, about both personality and his home world that we haven’t really seen yet. We’ll do a little more with his husband later on.”
The Circus itself is a vital character in Vibe, too — if it stays in one piece, that is
“That’s a powder keg,” Gates says. “Gypsy escapes at the end of issue 3 — what happens if all of them escape at once? Things get very serious very quickly and that gives me a lot of story to draw from and play with.”
Because Vibe is a new character for those recently getting comics but also possibly an obscure or even forgotten one to some longtime fans, making him identifiable for the audience is key
While Batman’s whole reason for being stems from the death of his parents and him wanting to make sure that doesn’t happen to somebody else, Cisco’s origin is similar in that he wants to use his powers to honor his older brother’s memory and legacy
“His brother was essentially the golden child. He was perfect, he was the high school star, he was the first person in their family to ever get a full ride to college. And then one day he was just gone,” Gates says
And because their middle brother Dante slid into a listless life and their father was crippled with grief, “he looked at the two of them and said, ‘I’m the only one keeping this family together so I have to be as good as I can be and I have to be the best person I can be.’ “
One aspect Gates enjoys about Vibe is Cisco’s relationship with his brother Dante, he says. “In theory he could be the most powerful superhero in the DC Universe with enough time and training. But what needs to happen really revolves around his relationship with his brother and keeps the story grounded between the two of them. They’re talking things through going, ‘Oh my God, I just tore a hole in the universe. What do I do?’ “
Another cool aspect: the fact that Vibe is learning on the job and, yeah, he’s going to mess up sometimes
“It opens a lot of doors and you get to write a lot of scenes where something happens with his powers and he goes, ‘I didn’t know I could do that …’ He’s figuring out his own life as a hero as we’re reading along,” Gates says
That life becomes a lot more dangerous in Vibe No. 5 when the teen comes into conflict with the Suicide Squad
Gates says Pete Woods draws a “killer” version of this government-sponsored band of murderers, thieves and cutthroats where Vibe faces off with the marksman Deadshot as well as the reintroduced Crowbar (from the ’80s-era Justice League) and King Shark wants to have Gypsy for dinner
Between the Squad and moments like in Justice League of America where Vibe was a little mortified meeting a blood-soaked Hawkman for the first time, fans are getting to see what a crazy place the DC Universe is through Vibe’s reactions to all of it
“He is a nice POV character to unfold some opinions about what’s happening in a story,” Gates says
“Geoff and I have been trying to be very conscious of writing what we would think or feel if confronted by scary villains or information about the company you work for, and just be very honest with those emotions and let them come through so hopefully the reader can go, ‘Yeah, if I saw a giant shark guy trying to eat a girl, that’s probably what I would try to do, too.’ “
