Avengers: the Initiative - Special #1 - Marvel

I loved this book. I'm not sure why it couldn't be done in a regular issue of the Initiative, but . . I still thought it was great. Basically, we meet the members of the Arizona team and the Nevada team. But really, the crux of the story is about the relationship between Hardball and Komodo. These two are going at it hot and heavy. They have been since the early issue of the Initiative. But, we learn a couple of things about Roger this issue. First he has an older brother that used to be a professional wrestler. That is until somebody came along and crippled him. We also find out . . . what we didn't know until now, is that Hardball has ties to HYDRA. Somehow they found out that he got his powers from the Power Broker . . he started out as a thief to pay for them. So they came along and paid off his parents bills and now are offering to heal his brother. All he has to do is steal the formula that his girlfriend, Melati, stole from Dr. Connors so that all of HYDRA will be able to regenerate the way that Komodo and the Lizard do. I thought that love would conquer all and together they would find a way to beat this Senator Woodman, that's threatening him, but . . stories don't always have a happy ending. The rest of the team find out what's going on and come to assist in the fight. But it soon becomes obvious to Roger that the only way he's going to be able to beat Woodman . . especially after he takes the formula himself . . and stop him from hurting his friends, is to kill him. He also knows that HYDRA isn't going to let go of him just like that. So he thinks that he'll make the most of this mess and at the very least he'll move into the Senator's position. He leaves Melati in one of his energy bubbles, as he leaves in the Senator's car. It was a sad ending, but . . I thought it was pretty realistic. I mean, things played out the way they probably would have in the real world. That is if people had powers in the real world and got themselves into these fantastic situations. Overall, I thought Christos Gage and Steve Yu did a great job with this issue. I even liked the backup story. It was basically a retelling or Trauma's origins and how he ended up at the camp. But then, for a twist, we find out that Nightmare is his real father. I didn't see that one coming. I really like this book. It's a shame that it will probably be going away pretty soon. I don't see it lasting much longer than the Secret Invasion. But hopefully they'll find someplace for all of these kids. It's a great bunch of characters.