For more on Jim Lee’s WildCATS, click HERE!
HAHAHAHAHAHA- Jesus! Lookit this guy! I mean, Rob Liefeld was a PARTNER of Jim Lee’s at this time! Youngblood guest-starred in the second & third issues of Jim’s signature Image book! So Jim just COMPLETELY rips off Deadpool, right down to the color scheme and Those Damn ’90s Eyepatches-Over-The-Mask!
In any case, Pike is Half-Kherubim like most of the heroes, but was found by Helspont first and recruited into his Cabal, where he’s the most active field agent. Like Deadpool at the time, he’s a snide, cynical, flippant killer. He acts somewhat bloodthirsty, and compliments Warblade’s talents, bemoaning than the WildC.A.T.s got to him first, and despite all the mayhem going on, he doesn’t really prominently job. Much later, he reappears and challenges Warblade to a duel to the death- Warblade wins, finally killing the villain. He showed up again in the NuDCU, amazingly being used by Liefeld himself in his Hawkman run, now shifting Pike into being a Hawkman villain. I… guess that works? Better than being the forgotten WildC.A.T.s baddie that they eventually just ignored.
And now we come to the “Big Bad” of the WildC.A.T.s book- Helspont! Who is… well he’s got a dynamic, awesome design that could only have debuted in the ’90s, I’ll give him that. Problematically, it’s GHOST RIDER’s design, but you can’t win ’em all. In the first four issues of the series, he comes off as every “Dark Lord” villain you’ve ever seen- the volatile, confident, dangerous “Dark Lord” who leads his Daemonites faction against the pretty, noble Kherubim. While his allies have to possess humans, Helspont has possessed an “Acurian”, giving him a lot of extra powers. Like most ’90s villains, he’s got a long cape, energy blasts and pointy shoulders. His first plan was to use a Macguffin to power his ships to allow Daemonite vessels to invade Earth, but things didn’t work out and he escaped.
The character would reappear more times as a recurring nemesis- he fought a ton of Image heroes during Wildstorm Rising , which split off their continuity. When he realized the backstory of the Kherubim (they were thinking of exterminating the Daemonites as an “unpredictable” servant race), he grew even more hateful, and went nuts trying to find another super-device- he ended up faking his death and possessing the “Planet Shaper”, with Mr. Majestic fighting to stop him. Majestic then “outsmarted” him, since the Shaper required life on Earth to function, and right at that moment, all life on Earth was kidnapped by aliens- something Majestic knew was going to happen, thanks to time travel- this reads like the HUGEST Ass Pull in history, right here. Helspont lost all power, and was vaporized by Majestic. He was later introduced in a new continuity as a Daemonite hive-mind of sorts. He also showed up in the “New 52” at DC as a Superman nemesis.
Helspont has the “Look” of a Big Bad, but is arguably under-utilized- Wikipedia says he has been in fewer than 25 individual comic books! He was the main villain of the WildC.A.T.s TV series, and is arguably the most famous and popular Image villain who’s not from Spawn , but he’s still kind of a forgotten act.
Savant is the daughter of an arranged coupling between Mister Majestic and Zealot- a full-blooded Kherubim who grew up thinking she was Zealot’s sister. She is an adventurer doing a kind of “Cosmic Indiana Jones” thing, using specialized gear with advanced tech, drifting away from her warrior heritage and being more into archaeology and history. Said to be “irresponsible and brash”, she looks more like Boom-Boom wearing Cannonball’s gear (the bomber jacket and aviator goggles), or something like Gina Diggers from Gold Diggers . She joined the WildC.A.T.s in its second incarnation when the previous team was thought killed, and she briefly enters into a relationship with her teammate Tao, but he betrays them all and nearly gets them all killed- the team soon breaks up. She briefly led a spin-off book called Savant Garde , along with her father (though neither knew the nature of their relationship yet).
uggggggggghhhhhhhhhhh I didn’t realize this guy was a WildC.A.T.s member. Or created that long ago.
Okay, so I’ve never read a story featuring the character- my reaction is based entirely on the fans of the character, many of whom adored him to the point where I decided to hate him out of spite. It can get a little much when places you inhabit are inundated with guys firing ropes all over the place because of one character. Can you imagine how annoyed you’d be if I kept shilling the same characters all the time 1?
Mr. Majestic was created by Jim Lee as a deliberate counter to the old “Why does Superman not simply FIX everything in the world?” argument that’s been going around for years. So of course Lee words it like “Why is he afraid to use these powers?” and makes a guy with a different personality entirely. It turns out that this Supermanalogue is Lord Majestros, a high-level Kherubim who was also trapped on Earth for centuries. His backstory contains one human wife, but in general, he views humans as lower beings compared to Kherubim- he has spent centuries fighting for justice, and joined Team One alongside some other Image backstory characters.
Majestic reforms the WildC.A.T.s when the original team is presumed dead, but the team is a disaster, as most are manipulated by the evil T.A.O. He learns that teammate Savant is his daughter, having sired her with Zealot centuries ago (fertile Kherubim were commanded to breed back then; Zealot lied and said the child was stillborn). Then, in 2003, Wildstorm published a Mr. Majestic solo book, and he meets his long-dead son (reborn in an automaton’s body), then loses him- he is then flung into DC’s Metropolis, then later returns home with another solo book, Majestic . He had some philosophical debates with Superman over Majestros’s idea of throwing criminals in prison without a trial, and his arguments with DC’s heroes, whom he found lacking his obsessive sense of justice.
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