So Hardware’s messing with the timeline only ended up making things worse. First, his past self got falsely arrested for the murder of Edwin Alva. But after a major court trial, he was acquitted and then elected the new chairman of Alva Enterprises. He then continued his work on developing the special Q Juice which empowered the Bang Babies in our timeline and prepared to administer them to test subjects. But an accident causes a new and even deadlier “Big Bang,” where a bunch of people got splashed with the Q Juice and gain powers and a war breaks out on the streets. Curtis gets called in by the President of The United States to make the Q Juice to available to the US military, so they can create super soldiers to fight the new Bang Babies, but leads to worldwide causes, with rouge superhumans fighting in the streets. The Icon of this timeline confronts Curtis, to demand he find a cure for the Q Juice, and that’s when the original Hardware re-appears to join his past self (who’s also created his own armor based on his future self’s armor) to take on Icon.

So for several pages, we get the Icon vs. Hardware(s) battle that the series title promises. Let’s just say it doesn’t end well for Hardware, who is convinced to go back and undo the things he changed. But despite learning this obvious lesson about not messing with history, Hardware then gets the idea to go even further back in time to change something else. He literally tries to stop the transatlantic slave trade from ever starting.

Sure, it’s an intriguing idea, better than the typical “go back in time to kill Hitler” type of time travel story that’s become so obvious, but considering what he just went through in this issue, where changing some comparatively minor events just makes the present worse, you’d think a man who’s as smart as Hardware is supposed to be would realize that trying to mess with a massive historical event like this could be catastrophic. Nevertheless, he tries, only to be met with an even more shocking cliffhanger, this one which utilizes a supervillain from the mainstream DC Universe.

Now this development, which I won’t spoil here, is something I’m really not sure how I feel about it. Generally speaking, I don’t like Milestone mixing with DC, but I’ll try to keep an open mind and see where Reggie Hudlin and Leon Chills are going with this.

We get a little bit of Rocket again in this issue, still in the exclusive private school in Switzerland, and her story also ties into the cliffhanger. Denys Cowan and Yasmin Florez Montanez continue to split art duties on this book and do a fine if not spectacular job.

Chacebook rating: FOUR STARS

AVAILABLE AT AMAZON.COM