#yi yang

Summed up 15 years of comics in 7 little text boxes... but it leaves out the stuff about how Night Raven might be immortal because a curse, and how he and Yi Yang both survived nuclear blasts...

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Remember DARKSTAR? She, VANGUARD, and URSA MAJOR are the only students we originally saw that attended/were raised in the “Super Soldier School” run by Professor Phobos in the USSR, but it’s later revealed there were more. After the State shut it down (due to the discovery that Phobos was draining the energy of his students to give HIMSELF powers), some of the students were sent elsewhere. For instance, Vanguard and Ursa Major were drafted into the army, while Darkstar was sent on a mission to the US to retrieve the Black Widow and her ally Ivan Petrovich. Others, however, were not so lucky, such as Issa Koblev, aka the Snow Leopard, and his identical brothers Illya and Ioakim. Presumably born with their feline mutation, the boys were likely taken by the State as babies or children like Darkstar, Vanguard, and Ursa Major were, and raised in the “school” by Phobos to be a weapon for the Soviets. But when the school was shut down, he, his brothers, and other students were simply left there...in the frozen wastelands of Siberia. Rather than stay there and rot, the Snow Leopard brothers set out on their own into the wilderness. They embraced the feral nature of their mutation, and this allowed them to survive until they were discovered by the immortal supervillain YI YANG. She became their new teacher, as well as Issa’s lover, and all three served her with absolute loyalty. They led her back to the remains of the school, and she made it her new base of operations, renaming it Xanadu. Unfortunately, her criminal activities led her afoul of her old foe Night Raven, along with Black Widow and Ivan Petrovich (ironically the same people that his former classmates had been sent after years ago themselves) When it looked like Issa was losing against Night Raven while fighting him in a warehouse, Yi Yang blew the entire place up despite Issa’s pleas. Sadly, it was only Issa who died...all three heroes survived, and pursued Yi Yang to Xanadu. It was here that they met and defeated Issa’s brothers, Illya and Ioakim, and took them into custody. Presumably, they escaped at some point, as they were next seen as part of “The Remont Six”, a group of superhuman Soviet revolutionaries led by Iron Maiden, an old foe of Black Widow. They attacked an AIM base outside the Forbidden Zone, but were felled by Ursa Major. Their current status is unknown, but they were among the mutants who kept their powers after M-Day. These boys really make me sad. Like Darkstar and her peers, they had no choice from birth, and unlike Darkstar and the others, they ended up with even less opportunities for anything else. Watching Issa plead with Yi Yang is so sad, it seems less like “I don’t want to die” so much as “I don’t want to disappoint you” and I can’t help but think that’s a result of the conditioning he surely underwent from birth/childhood at the “school” (not to mention suggests a VERY uneven dynamic in their relationship). I really hope that his brothers are getting psychological rehabilitation while they’re imprisoned...but it’s unlikely.

Sleep on the head After the battle

by Yi Yang.

Also, I just realized they gave Nick Fury a top billing in this book and he is barely in it.

More from «Artstation» here

Raven and Yi Yang go down fighting, and it'll be over 10 years before we see either of them again.