Suicide Risk #7

"Nightmare Scenario," Part 2 (of 4)
written by Mike Carey
art by Elena Casagrande

Rather rapidly, Leo Winters has incrementally compromised himself, often under threat, so that he now accompanies a particularly unsavory band of super-powered thugs with obnoxious senses of entitlement and little regard for human life.  Each step has proved larger than he could anticipate until he's so far down the rabbit hole he's already having difficulty recognizing himself.  As Christine (a.k.a. Just a Feeling) explains it, Leo is literally fighting for his identity.  Having let Requiem into his head, he now must battle it out to see who can stay, and there's little optimism for him.

The seams between Leo and Requiem are difficult to tease out, both for him and for us readers.  Sometimes Requiem's interference is unmistakable.  The weather show they put on for the Mexican army depends heavily on Requiem's knowledge of physical systems and expertise with his powers, which Leo has only rudimentary skill in wielding, but the decision to frighten rather than kill the soldiers is perhaps more characteristic of Leo.  We know little about Requiem—having seen him only briefly in Leo's dreams, heard only little about him from the other characters, and only occasionally noted the small inconsistencies with Leo's personality—but what we do know is limited to his differences from Leo; what they share is nearly impossible to distinguish.  When Leo off-handedly thanks Plane Jane for setting him down, when he chooses to walk up to the troops instead of fly, and when he chooses to kiss Plane Jane, it's more difficult to say just who is making those decisions.  To Carey's credit, the uneasy answer may very well be "both". 

Suicide Risk has propelled its characters into a bleak world of political and violent conquest, a world littered with amoral and self-interested super-powered invaders.  But at its center, the mysterious family drama orbiting the Winters household remains it's primary investment.  As Leo gets dragged—sometimes, it seems, willingly—further and further from home, so much so that he now can't imagine returning, his daughter, whose own powers began manifesting as his did and whose destiny would seem to be intertwined with his own, is quietly showing the most impressive and most powerful abilities of all.  She has, however unwittingly, opened a portal into another world.  Though we see her little, perhaps the most intriguing aspect of her transformation is that neither she nor Just a Feeling has mentioned anything of another personality in her head.  Tracey Elizabeth Winters is, by all evidence, just herself, herself with extraordinary powers.