X-O Manowar Part 32: X-O Manowar #16 (May, 1993)

Aric faces his biggest threat yet – bad writing.

I have this issue.

After settling a workers’ strike at one of Orb Industries oil rigs, Aric learns that two employees have gone missing at one of Orb’s subsidiaries. The local police can’t get involved because the company was originally run by Spider-Aliens. Ken is allowed to investigate, and is taken prisoner.

Thanks to Ken’s X-O arm, the Good-Skin informs Aric of Ken’s situation and comes to the rescue, but the kidnappers fight back…using alien weapons.

Aric discovers that the CEO of the subsidiary has been selling the alien tech that was discovered there to a criminal cartel, and that the final meeting was about to take place. Aric intervenes, and destroys the alien weapons.

Notes of Interest:

1) The only significant thing we learn here is that the X-O Armor can be hurt by a sustained burst fired simultaneously from several of the alien weapons.

WTF? Moment: This is, hands down, the worst issue of X-O Manowar to date. Obviously a “done-in-one” filler issue (not written by Layton by the way), the artwork by Jose Delbo makes Aric look like he came out of the 1970’s. Maybe that’s Delbo’s style, but it doesn’t work here. Especially after two issues of Bart Sears’ version.

WTF? Moment #2: Another example of how badly written this issue is: Aric settles the worker’s strike “barbarian-style” off-panel. This is dramatically different from how he settled the dispute way back in X-O Manowar #5. Now, an argument can be made about how Aric thinks more like a warrior and less like a king since the events of Unity, but even then I would have rather seen the event than read about it.