We3 - Softcover

Morrison, Grant

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1401204953 ISBN 13: 9781401204952

Publisher: Vertigo, 2005

Synopsis

Writer Grant Morrison and artist Frank Quitely deliver the emotional journey of WE3 - three house pets weaponized for lethal combat by the government - as they search for "home" and ward off the shadowy agency that created them.

With nervous systems amplified to match their terrifying mechanical exoskeletons, the members of Animal Weapon 3 (WE3) have the firepower of a battalion between them. But they are just the program's prototypes, and now that their testing is complete, they're slated to be permanently "decommissioned," causing them to seize their one chance to make a desperate run for freedom. Relentlessly pursued by their makers, the WE3 team must navigate a frightening and confusing world where their instincts and heightened abilities make them as much a threat as those hunting them - but a world, nonetheless, in which somewhere there is something called "home."

About this title

About the Author

Grant Morrison has been working with DC Comics for more than twenty years, beginning with his legendary runs on the revolutionary titles ANIMAL MAN and DOOM PATROL. Since then he has written numerous best-sellers — including JLA, BATMAN and New X-Men — as well as the critically acclaimed creator-owned series THE INVISIBLES, SEAGUY, THE FILTH, WE3 and JOE THE BARBARIAN. Morrison has also expanded the borders of the DC Universe in the award-winning pages of SEVEN SOLDIERS, ALL-STAR SUPERMAN, FINAL CRISIS and BATMAN, INC., and he is currently reinventing the Man of Steel in the all-new ACTION COMICS.
         In his secret identity, Morrison is a “counterculture” spokesperson, a musician, an award-winning playwright and a chaos magician. He is also the author of the New York Times best-seller Supergods, a groundbreaking psycho-historic mapping of the superhero as a cultural organism. He divides his time between his homes in Los Angeles and Scotland.
 

Reviews

Grade 10 Up–This title reads a bit like Robocop meets Homeward Bound meets the final scene of The Wild Bunch. In it, animals are being transformed into intelligent experimental weapons, and three in particular are trained to work together as a team known as WE3. When the animals formerly known as Bandit the dog, Tinker the cat, and Pirate the rabbit are decommissioned and condemned to death, their doctor/trainer decides to let them escape. What follows is a series of action-packed and heartbreaking chase and fight scenes between the lethal animals and the United States military. The artwork is innovative and breathtaking, and there are several pages without text. While this requires some concentration, those who take time to look carefully at all of the images will witness an amazing story. This book pulls no punches; sensitive readers will be moved to tears, and animal lovers might be moved to put the book down for a while before picking it up again. The violence is often graphic, but those who wade through all the blood will be rewarded with some badly needed closure. Compelling, moving, and disturbing, this is a thought-provoking work for mature readers.–Andrea Lipinski, New York Public Library
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Starred Review. Bandit, Tinker and Pirate are three pets who just want to go home. This collection of Vertigo's three-issue release tells the tale of a dog, a cat and a rabbit, who, like their Incredible Journey–style forebears, work together as they travel through a hostile human world. The difference here is in the awful loss of innocence wreaked by human ingenuity upon the animals. They've been bioengineered to act as military killing machines, but, as the covers reveal, they started out as house pets, and readers will feel heart-tugging empathy even as the former pets are driven to acts of shocking violence while escaping from the military. Morrison, perhaps the greatest writer in comics today, endows his animals with synthesized cyborg speech in which they express their most basic desires for warmth, food and love, as well as their attempts to process their unnatural capacities for violence. "Bad dog," Bandit repeatedly scolds himself after taking down yet another soldier. Quitely's art consists of lucid images of mayhem and sweetness that, in the most impressive spreads, fractalize to express the way these animals "experience time and motion differently." It's a groundbreaking and bravura performance. This is Morrison's most accessible tale ever, and one that is destined to be a classic. (July)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

In WE3, a dog, a cat, and a rabbit--former house pets--are biologically modified by government scientists and given specially devised armaments to turn them into deadly military weapons, trained to kill and lacking the fear of death that inhibits humans. When they're about to be "decommissioned," their sympathetic keeper allows them to escape, triggering a desperate government effort to track them down. Meanwhile, Bandit, Tinker, and Pirate, who can speak language, limitedly, through cybernetic enhancement, search for something called "home" and wreak havoc as the military tries to recapture them. It's rather like Incredible Journey meets The Terminator. Writer Morrison, who has displayed a strong animal-rights streak in his nonconventional superhero series Animal Man, develops this concept so that it's simultaneously thrilling and touching yet not in the least sentimental (copious bloodshed obviates that). Quitely's precise drawings impart an air of realism, and his imaginative panel arrangements and intelligent pacing make the whole thing work. Morrison is currently devoted to superheroes, and this tangential foray is something to be savored. Gordon Flagg
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: Vertigo
• Publication date: 2005
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1401204953
• ISBN 13: 9781401204952
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 104