Posted in: Comics, DC Comics | Tagged: dc comics, Hardware, milestone

Hardware Rewrites Milestone's Past, But Can't Escape It (Spoilers)

Today's Icon Vs Hardware #1 discovers time travel, trying to piut right what once went wrong. And in this case, it's the Big Bang itself.

Published Tue, 14 Feb 2023 06:18:12 -0600

by Rich Johnston

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Icon Vs Hardware #1 out today, is the latest Milestone revival from Reginald Hudlin, Leon Chills Denys Cowan, Yasmin Flores Montanez, John Floyd and Chris Sotomayor. A revival of the original series from thirty years ago, it naturally suits a little time travel, as that is what many of its older readers will be experiencing when reading it. Hardware was the first published Milestone title. A new take on Iron Man, Curtis Metcalf is Hardware, a child prodigy who was discovered and educated at the age of twelve by a businessman, and is eventually employed as an inventor who works for the businessman, revealed to be a crime boss. Metcalf creates a superhero identity, Hardware, to fight against his boss' interests.

But here, he seems to aim to stop the Big Bang, the Dakota event that caused the existence of most superheroes of the Milestone Universe to exist. Originally Dakota mayor Jefferson ordered police to spray gang members with an experimental tear gas laced with a radioactive marker. But it also contained a compound, quantum juice, that killed most exposed to it, including police. But a few mutated and became superpowered "bang babies". Though Hardware appears to have more than one mission.

As well as learning that he may have a half-brother…

There is also learning one can be taken out to prevent the Big Bang…

But by rewriting the past, has he made himself the very bad guy that he once targeted, and caused the very thing he once tried to prevent? Milestone's history is rewritten, but the major events have a way to keep happening, it seems…

ICON VS HARDWARE #1 (OF 5) CVR A RAHZZAH
(W) Reginald Hudlin, Leon Chills (CA) Rahzzah
Two titans of the Milestone Universe clash — and in the process, set in motion a chain of events leading to a story bigger than you could ever imagine! When Hardware discovers a long-suppressed time machine hidden in a government warehouse, his obsession with righting the wrongs of the past — those of both American history and his own tragic family — will unravel the fabric of time for the Milestone Universe. But while there are many problems with Hardware's plan, there's one big one: wherever he goes in America's last two centuries, Icon is there, having lived through it! And a man as powerful as Icon knows the profound danger of the forces Curtis Metcalf is unleashing…and he'll do whatever it takes to put the genie back in the bottle! Icon Vs Hardware is the official kickoff of Act One of Milestone's WORLDS COLLIDE event—and if you think you know what that phrase means, you'd better not get overconfident! This is the ideal jumping-on point for those who've sat out the story of Dakota so far, because this ride is headed somewhere unexpected!
Retail: $4.99 In-Store Date: 02/14/2023

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