If you had the power to solve the world’s problems, would you? For Amanda McKee, codename Livewire she understands what it’s like to have someone forcibly put in place their idea of a world-order. Instead she decides to reclaim her narrative on her own terms.
As a character Livewire has been in the Valiant universe since 1993. Co-created by Jim Shooter, David Lapham and Bob Layton Amanda McKee has been a journey-woman. She’s gone from joining UNITY (a band of other heroes) to fight terrorist threats, battling aliens who wanted to take over the earth and joining the government to take on her old mentor Toyo Harada. But now because of the second Harbinger Wars, where the government attempted to wipe out the psiots they couldn’t control, Livewire is now labeled a terrorist herself. Being a black woman who refuses to be controlled and told to do what’s right, Amanda is also in the midst of cleaning up Harada’s missteps. But while being a warrior for fellow psiots she’s made enemies of those she thought she was protecting. Each get a message to head over to a secure meeting place and there Amanda has an unexpected confrontation with Avi who angrily reminds her of the damage her war caused. He shows her the other side of her actions – a human side where people who aren’t involved are reduced to unexpected collateral damage. While Amanda was fighting against the genocide of psiots, there were everyday people who lost everything, including their lives.
When feelings are involved the world gets complicated and Amanda is looking to protect the remnants of her family. In her backstory she is a foster-child Harada finds, unearths her psiot ability to master all things electronic (it’s how she’s able to handle Bloodshot, through the nanites implanted in his blood) and then has her help him try to take over the world. For Amanda caring for others means doing things that are messy, that they may not agree with. It may even mean her abandoning them to keep them alive. Vyta Ayala who is more than a rising star has taken a fairly one-dimensional character and has given her a complexity where you see her conflicted with the choices she’s made. Even if Amanda would not change what she’s done, Ayala shows how those decisions have impacted the character. In a sense Amanda is a lonely woman with little connection to the world other than her psiot abilities. It causes others to fear her, allowing few to get close. The artwork also has the reader see through Amanda’s eyes. At times we view the world as she does. With a river of information she has to filter, you see how Amanda struggles not to go mad. It’s like every computer file open, every bit of social media on and running constantly. It makes her human, more than a trained machine, hell-bent on taking over the universe.
This new team has packed twenty pages of this comic-book with characters who can be seen as people. We’re all trying to make connections and for Amanda McKee it’s infinitely harder given the things about her she can’t change. A telling storyline for these times.
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