After a year and a half of working on and off on this, I finally finished up this personal piece! ^_^

Just a fun piece of Victoria, Elizabeth, and Keiko having one of their monthly diner lunch dates in the few free time not devoted to protecting Aurora City.

Captain Dynamo!

Trade retrospective by Christopher John.

My wife and I were talking about romantic comedies one day and I mentioned that I never really enjoyed that particular genre because it is, by nature, extremely derivative. Boy meets girl, they court, they finally get together, boy or girl breaks the other person's heart, their partner leaves 3/4 of the way through the movie, then they make-up following an overly-dramatic display of affection and penance. Credits. You always know where the story is headed, and when watching the movie you feel as though you're just going through the motions.

Now I'm supposed to be writing about a comic book, so why the hell am I am talking about romantic comedies?! I mention them because superhero comics, specifically corporate-owned superhero comics, often suffer from the same plot issues as romantic comedies.

Menagerie

Originally named Slingshot due to her flight powers, Livvie is one of Captain Dynamo's illegitimate kids. After an energy ray changed her powers, Livvie took the name Menagerie and can now change shape.

Olivia "Livvie" Lewis' biological mother passed away when Livvie was young enough to require her adoptive father and her mother's widow, Neil Lewis, a high-priced, Washington DC lawyer, to learn how to cook. Livvie is a junior at Georgetown University, an overachiever, and a driven activist who is involved with half a dozen different volunteer organizations and extracurricular activities, which include working as a reporter for G.U.'s campus newspaper, The Hoya, and volunteering at a clinic. Her workaholic nature leaves less time for her boyfriend Derrick than he’d like.

Following the assassination of Captain Dynamo, much-beloved superhero protector of Tower City, his widow, a former government agent posing as a now-retired investigative reporter Maddie Warner discovered from his personal effects that he had been unfaithful to her countless times. Despite her devastation at this discovery, Warner realized that without a full-time protector, Tower City would be vulnerable to Captain Dynamo’s legion of super-villain enemies. Maddie used her skills and the information she discovered to track down five people who could be Dynamo’s illegitimate children.

Livvie was the second of Captain Dynamo’s children that Warner contacted, and the second oldest. Gathering all five of the children together, Warner exposed them to the same unidentified radiation that gave Captain Dynamo his powers forty years earlier, unlocking their powers. Livvie inherited her father’s ability of flight, took the codename Slingshot, and works to protect Tower City with her newly discovered brothers and sisters.

As a member of Dynamo 5, Slingshot is dedicated and attentive. She is respectful and reserved towards Maddie Warner, usually referring to and addressing her as "Ma'am", or "Mrs. Warner", and eschewing profanity in her presence. She finds Warner's writings as a journalist to be "brilliant", and objects to her brother Spencer’s view that this deference is an attempt on her part to "suck up" to Warner. She is not completely deferential to Warner, however. For example, in the team's first year, she angrily refuses to comply with Warner's order that she and her siblings stay in Tower City to protect it after she learned of her father's kidnapping.

Neil Lewis was kidnapped by the former employers of an assassin named Lionel Barstow. These employers blackmailed her into freeing Barstow, but after she and her siblings did so, Barstow killed his ex-employers with his "death touch". Barstow explained that after he was captured, his attorney, Neil Lewis, advised him to testify against his employers. Although Slingshot's siblings are outraged at learning that they freed a murderer, Slingshot is more concerned with getting her father to safety than returning Barstow to the authorities, a decision that later serves as a source of tension among the team, Livvie later finds Barstow and returns him to the authorities, despite his threat to use her secret identity as a bargaining chip with them.

Neil Lewis was profoundly disturbed to discover his daughter's secret when she rescued him, and pained to learn that Livvie's mother cheated on him with Captain Dynamo. Livvie, however, recalling her feeling of betrayal with Spencer, sympathized with him, but reassured her father that because of Dynamo's shapeshifting ability, he could have impersonated Neil himself when he fathered Livvie, and that Livvie's mother may not have truly cheated on Neil.    Recently in a battle with Synergy and Maddie's son, Father Gideon, the powers of the Dynamo 5 were switched.  Livvie lost the ability to fly but gained the ability to change shape.  Livvie's shape changing skills are more advanced than her brother's.  Livvie can change both size and shape where her siblings could only transform their shape. With her original powers, Livvie had the superhuman ability to defy gravity, and fly under her own power. The top speed and altitude she can achieved unaided is currently unknown, but she is able to use this ability to be an effective fighter in battles. In one encounter with the reptilian monster known as Whiptail, she was able to fly around the creature fast enough to create a miniature tornado, causing it dizziness, without suffering any ill effects herself. Although she did not inherit her father’s superhuman strength, she is able to generate extra thrust while in flight, as she is able to carry another person when flying. She also uses the speed she can generate while in flight to knock out an opponent with the impact of a single punch. Whether this is a physiological adaptation that exists as part of her flight power, or a result of reinforced gloves, is unclear.