Reviewer: Jesse Baker
Story Title: Suspicion Threshold
Written by: Joe Casey
Penciled by: Dustin Nguyen
Inked by: Richard Friend
Colored by: Randy Mayor
Lettered by: Richard Starkings
Editor: Ben Abernathy
Publisher: Wildstorm/DC Comics
Spartan makes a deal with the gun-toting CC Rendozzo, who threatens to expose Spartan and the technology of the Halo Corporation as being alien if Spartan doesn’t make her his business partner. The interaction between the two is painful to read do to Mr. Stepford Wife AKA Spartan’s reaction (or lack there of) towards Rendozzo and her threat to expose him as being from outer space and the Halo Battery being derived from alien technology.
Meanwhile we learn the identity of the employers of the S&M Thugs as being Grifter, who wants to keep Mr. Dolby and his business partner Sam Garfield from discovering Halo’s secret origins. This subplot seems to be pretty boring given the fact that we haven’t been given any sort of real tension or threat towards why we should care about these two men and their quest towards finding out the truth about Spartan except the fact that Sam Garfield is a neurotic jerk who hates Spartan for no other reason than because he exists. Even with the sequence at the end of the issue, where Dolby is confronted by Grifter and gloats about sending his S&M friends to beat him up and pulls a gun on him seems meaningless except to produce a cheesy cliffhanger for next issue.
And finally we get more of the only decent part of this issue as Wax finds out from his evil boss that he thinks that his wife is cheating on him and rambles on about how it’s ok for him to commit adultery while making vague threats towards how he would kill anyone he catches sleeping with his wife. This encounter is followed up with Wax continuing to use his power to make his boss’s wife his unwilling sex-slave while giving a monologue about how using his power this way makes him feel dirty. This plot, while it has more depth to it than the rest of the storylines (do to the hatred between Wax and his boss) seems stuck in second gear as Casey is gratuitously throwing in these sex scenes and tit shots just to justify the book having the “Mature Audience†label on the book.
We also get the indoctrination of Agent Orange into the Wildcats team. Unfortunately he remains mute and simply stands by while watching Wax and Grifter ramble on and on about formal wear and how Spartan has started bugging their conversations taped inside Halo’s corporate HQ. Hopefully Casey will give Orange a personality soon and not have him be yet another one-dimensional cardboard cut-out on the team.
