Gen13

Gen¹³ is a superhero team and comic book series originally written by Jim Lee and Brandon Choi and illustrated by J. Scott Campbell. It was published by WildStorm under the Image Comics banner, which went on to become an imprint for DC Comics, who continued publishing the Gen¹³ title. The comic features a loosely organized team of super-powered beings composed of five teenagers and their mentor.

Development

In the early 1990s, colleagues and childhood friends Brandon Choi and Jim Lee were discussing the various superhero team comic book across the various publishers, with both realizing that a team book prominently featuring a group of teenagers had not been published since The New Mutants. Lee had just read DC Comics' Legionnaires which served as the impetus for the direction Lee wanted to take as he felt focusing on more youthful group of heroes would differentiate itself from grimmer and more cynical material of the time such as Wildcats and Youngblood. Choi began working on Lee's character designs with J. Scott Campbell who had been with Lee's studio for two weeks after being hired through a talent search. Another point to add differentiation from other books of the time was to make Caitlin Fairchild the lead character which at the time was considered a gamble due to a mindset within the toy and comics industry that female characters were not marketable or sellable to the core audience which the robust sales for the series managed to counter. While Campbell acknowledged the presence of tropes like shadowy government conspiracies in the initial Gen¹³ miniseries, the team's intention going forward in keeping with their desired approach would be more adventure based taking thematic and tonal inspiration from the works of George Lucas of Steven Spielberg. Initially, the book was intended to be called Gen X with the team featuring that name in their first appearance in the Valiant Comics and Image Comics Crossover limited series Deathmate, but due to Marvel Comics having trademarked the name Generation X for their upcoming book of the same name, the intended August 1993 release was cancelled and the series and team rebranded as Gen¹³, in reference to Generation X being the 13th born in the United States since the American Revolution.

Publication history

The series takes place in Jim Lee's Wildstorm Universe, and Gen¹³s stories and history intertwine with those from his own works, such as Wildcats and Team 7.
The setup of the series is that a group of teens are invited to take part in a government project, which is in actuality a prison-like testing ground on "gen-active" teens. The teens make their escape, but not before they manifest superhuman powers, and are labelled dangerous fugitives. They rely on each other to fight their foes and unveil the personal secrets that linked them to Team 7 and International Operations.
After a very successful run ending with issue #20, co-creator and illustrator J. Scott Campbell handed the reins of Gen¹³ over to other creative teams, saying that leaving freed him up to work on both the Gen¹³/Batman crossover and his own new series.
Following the run of Choi and Campbell were John Arcudi and Gary Frank. Their realistic style, both in writing and art, was a drastic change from the title's more fantastic elements. Following their run, Scott Lobdell returned the title to its less-serious, more-sexual roots, but still the title was not received well by fans.
After Lobdell's run, Adam Warren was assigned to the title. He had previously proven himself writing two stories using Gen¹³ characters, as well as a two-issue fill-in piece featuring a pop idol who threatened to take over the world with a catchy song. Warren's run was well received by fans and critics, but sales did not support the title.
Despite outrageous story arcs and many artist collaborations, the popularity of the book dwindled to the point where Wildstorm decided to blow up the entire team with a six-megaton bomb. This served as the catalyst to revamp the series with a new first issue written by Chris Claremont with pencils by Ale Garza. This title featured an all new team mentored by Caitlin Fairchild, and spawned a spin-off series titled 21 Down. However, this title was cancelled after barely a year. The final issue of the series revealed that the original team was, in fact, still alive, and that the new series had taken place in an alternate dimension which had in some fashion crossed over with the known continuity.
During the height of its popularity, Gen¹³ spawned two spin-off books, DV8 and Gen¹³ Bootleg, as well as a number of specials and mini-series. The team also starred in crossovers with other comic book characters such as Superman, Spider-Man, the Maxx, Monkeyman and O'Brien, two crossovers with the Marvel Comics teen hero team Generation X, and a crossover with the Fantastic Four. At one point in the early years, Wildstorm and DC were planning a teamup between the team and Batman. However, due to creative differences between creator Brandon Choi and DC, the crossover never happened, although J. Scott Campbell did create artwork showing Fairchild, Grunge, Roxy and Batman in a promotional image.
The title was "rebooted" in October 2006, initially written by Gail Simone with art from Talent Caldwell. At first, the title had no continuity with earlier series. The series was involved in the "Armageddon" crossover event and then taken over in 2008 with a new creative team, Scott Beatty and Mike Huddleston, as part of "World's End".
The new series was canceled along with the rest of the Wildstorm titles published at the time when the line folded. When the Wildstorm universe was subsequently folded into the DC Universe following Flashpoint, several of the members of Gen 13 began appearing in other titles. Caitlin Fairchild played a supporting role in Superboy and eventually began starring in the spin-off title The Ravagers.

Fictional team history

The original Gen¹³

International Operations started "government internship" for gifted youths, taking place in an isolated training facility. Following the manifestation of Caitlin Fairchild's powers, she fled the complex with Roxy Spaulding, Grunge, Burnout and Threshold in disguise. They were later joined by Sarah Rainmaker. The project was revealed to be a gathering of the gen-active progeny of Team 7.
Threshold tricked the group, sans Fairchild, to return to base to help free the other kids, but upon their return they were apprehended for further testing. With the help of Pitt and John Lynch, the kids finally escaped. The group retreated to La Jolla, California, and officially formed as the group Gen¹³. They opposed I.O. and their violent counterpart, DV8.
The team spent a lot of time delving into the past of Team 7 to learn more about themselves. Fairchild and Freefall learned they were half-sisters and Lynch was revealed to be Burnout's father. Also during this time, Freefall and Grunge began to date, while Rainmaker revealed herself to be bisexual.
The team was caught in an explosion of a six-megaton bomb and believed to be dead. Fairchild was the only survivor and mentored a new Gen¹³ team, effectively taking Lynch's role. However, this team existed in what is later revealed to be an alternate reality which was similar to the mainstream Wildstorm universe except for its point of divergence, the last issue of Gen¹³ volume 2. At the end of volume 3, the rest of the original Gen¹³ team was revealed to be alive and, after time-traveling to avoid the detonation that "killed" them, the reunited group returned to the mainstream Wildstorm universe.

Wildstorm

In early 2006, Wildstorm brought all its in-continuity comics since WildC.A.T.s #1 to an end. The universe's finale came in the form of the crossover miniseries Captain Atom: Armageddon. Following the conclusion of this limited series, the entire Wildstorm line was relaunched with "Worldstorm." A new Gen¹³ series began. The entire world had a "soft reset"; the surroundings were mostly familiar, but there were changes throughout.
In the first arc, the future Gen¹³ are taken away from their home lives. It is revealed that their parents have been assigned to raise the children to encourage the emergence of specific personality traits. In different areas of the country, Caitlin Fairchild, Roxy Spaulding, Eddie Chang, Bobby Lane and Sarah Rainmaker wake up, each wearing a uniform recognized by their parents. Strike teams immediately attempt to capture the kids; many of their foster parents are terminated.
In the course of the series, it is eventually revealed that these Gen¹³s were manipulated and formulated from birth by an unscrupulous biogenetics firm from I.O., called Tabula Rasa. Furthermore, the "souls" of the previous iterations of the Gen¹³s, previously collected by the Authority's Doctor, have settled into these bodies, and when the five of them are together, they cause people to forget their previous history, even those who knew them.
As a result of these new origins, the personalities, histories and abilities of each character have displayed mild-to-massive differences from the previous canon. For instance, Burnout is now a former juvenile hall-resident-turned-reggae-loving pacifist, and John Lynch is a young grunt in I.O.'s employ. Rainmaker is retconned into being a lesbian rather than bisexual, Fairchild is suspicious and unhappy about her excessive beauty, and Grunge is portrayed as being secretly more intelligent than even Caitlin. Outside of her newfound origins, the character of Freefall remains mostly consistent to previous iterations, save for a slightly greater level of confidence and self-reliance.