Terminal Hero - (Dynamite)

{Spoiler warning - click me to read!}Summary:

Issue one opens with a man enveloped in energy, with rays shooting out of his eyes, standing in a deserted desert-like area, a damaged facility burning in the background. Three men in protective suits and what appears to be flamethrowers arrive and incinerate him. Turn the page and it's...



...Five years later. Rory Fletcher, the main character, is being diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor. He's also a junior doctor at London's King Street Hospital. He's got about two months to live and he think after that he'll just cease to exist. He runs into a friend, Raz, on his way out. They chat about the diagnosis. Raz says maybe Rory will be reunited with Rory's sister in the afterlife. Rory says neither of them believe that. A few days after getting home and calling his mother to give her the news, Emma Flowers, "the hottest young doctor on the cardiology ward", shows up. She's heard the news from Raz and is crying, starts kissing him, and quickly starts to undress to have sex with him. Rory thinks he can probably count the remaining number of times he'll get laid on one hand. But it doesn't feel right to him to use her like that, he's afraid she'd regret it, even though he thinks he wouldn't, and shoves her out the door.

He listens to some reggae, gets high and talks to a poster of Bob Marley. Then Raz shows up. He says he had someone hack into a clandestine research facility to find something to treat Rory's tumor with. He thinks he found something, called Treatment Q. The head researcher was a man named Mathew Quigley. Rory asks wasn't there a messy suicide? Yep, five years ago, apparently after being dumped by his dog, who had taken a fancy to a local rottweiler; that Quigley belonged to a group that espoused romantic love between humans and canines. Raz says that story was a smear to cover the truth. That Quigley had been working on a treatment for inoperable tumors but got shut down because of the shocking side-effects. The whole project got labeled top secret by the government. Raz says he thinks he can recreate the project, even improve on it.

Later(doesn't say how much later. Hours? Days? Weeks?) Rory is shown running and screaming, he's seeing things and vomiting. Raz gives him another injection and talks about tweaking the dose. Four weeks later, back at the doctors office, the tumor has shrunk, a lot. Rory is thrilled, he's down to throwing up only four times a day and his hallucinations are manageable.



Rory and Raz are out where a girl is laughing and screeching as children do. Rory wishes she'd shut up, and suddenly thread is stitching the girl's mouth closed. Rory is startled his stray thought actually happened. He wonders if he should do something to help. Raz says he doesn't have that kind of control. Rory is shocked to learn Raz expected something like that to happen. Raz explains that the tumor and thus the treatment are targeting the area of the brain responsible for psychic abilities. They both then see a vision of Rory's dead sister. Raz says Rory must be creating her. Rory feels in some way that she is actually his sister. The sister vanishes, leaving a smoking crater in the street.

Four days later Rory starts having nightmares, of the little girl whose mouth was stitched shut begging hum to unstich her, of his dead little sister claiming her wanted to molest her. His doctor and a couple of government types try to reach him by phone, with no success. Rory calls Raza for help. Raz is meeting with a group of people he has also given Treatment Q to, he claims Quigley didn't get the dose right and had to be shot(no mention of the flamethrowers). They are concerned, he assures them he has tested his treatment on a guinea pig. Rory is hovering in the air outside the window and realizes HE is the guinea pig.

Rory is afraid if he confronts Raza he will kill him, so he goes to Emma's place. He bursts in through the window, his body crackling with energy. He thinks he came there for comfort, but when he sees her, decides he wants something else. He attacks her, disintegrating most of her clothes. She tries to reason with him. He tells her he doesn't want to hurt her, or at least part of him doesn't. He leaves her emotionally shaken, but physically unharmed.

He gets his appearance under control and heads to the red light district. He thinks he needs to do whatever is necessary to keep his nightmares at bay and doesn't want to do that with someone he likes. He has to feed his demons, and he never knew he had so many. He spends three nights having sex with prostitutes, snorting drugs, getting drunk and even gets a BJ from some random guy in an alley. He tells Raz he thinks a steady diet of whores, drugs and other sensual gratifications should keep things in check. Raz says Rory can't live like that. Rory finally confronts him about the guinea pig comment. Raz claims he's trying to help Rory, that the others are the actual guinea pigs. Rory calls him a liar and kills Raz in a fit of rage. A voice instructs him to come outside, that they have the house surrounded.. He goes outside to find Dr. Samuels, the two government types, guys in protective suits with flamethrowers, and helicopters circling overhead.



Dr. Samuels says they have his latest test results, and does Rory want the good news or the bad news?

In place of a letters page is a letter from the writer Peter Milligan, who talks about the genesis of the story, and how the series will be a dark journey, littered with horror, black humour, monsters, tenderness, sex and love. That it will be one hell of a ride.

My take:

I clearly went into this expecting something very different than what I got. A good guy who gets diagnosed with a terminal brain tumor and after being given an experimental treatment, has to do bad things to keep his disease in check. It sounds like your standard Faustian bargain, with science standing in for the devil. With the title Terminal Hero, I expected a basically good, heroic guy, and his descent to the dark side. Rory is no hero. Raz is apparently his closest friend, and Raz says Rory is "the nicest guy he knows". Raz remorselessly experimented on his closest friend, an entire other group of people, and claimed to each that the other was his guinea pig. Emma says he is a "Bloody good person. Caring. Decent. Lovely." Emma is someone who thinks so little of herself she immediately shows up to a friend's house offering pity sex upon hearing of a terminal diagnoses. No one in this book is good or decent or heroic. The main character seems one step up from being a piece of crap, and that's before he undergoes Treatment Q. His journey to the dark side feels like just taking things he would do anyway and taking them to a bit of excess.

The TV show Breaking Bad followed the descent of a high school teacher and family man into a drug lord and monster. That was a journey. Wherever this guy is going, it seems like a short hop from where he already is. Much like with the recent relaunch of Solar, Man of the Atom; there is no one I like in this book. No one I can care about, what they do, or what happens to them.

This was my first issue, and it will be my last.