Suicide Risk #13

"Seven Walls and a Pit Trap," Part 3 (of 3)
written by Mike Carey
art by Elena Casagrande

Leo Winters is far from the man he once was.  He's been engulfed by a world of aliens, superpowers, alternate dimensions, alternate memories, and wild conspiracies and political insurrection.  As he—now Requiem, mostly—flies away from their destructive encounter with the Men of Gold's lictors, policemen, his former colleagues see him escape:  "I- I must be going crazy.  That looked like Leo Winters!" (Suicide Risk #13: 19).  Then again, so too is Requiem.  Once the leader of a revolutionary force against a brutal oligarchy, he was unwavering righteous in his principles but unhesitatingly merciless when needed.  Now he has instincts he never did before.

Dr. Maybe:  "I said around the two of us.  Why did you risk our lives by shielding these others?"

Requiem:  "I- I don't know."  (18)

The lictors may only recognize Requiem in their scans, an ascendant and illegal personality, but Leo, the very personality they presumably fabricated as a "productive" prison for Requiem, is still resisting.  It may very well be an unforeseen and ironic consequence of the Men of Gold's sentence on the revolutionary, that those very characteristics that they designed for Leo Winters may turn Requiem into the freedom-fighter his cause needs him to be.  Dr. Maybe be damned.

If the conclusion of the previous issue left little doubt that Dr. Maybe is a manipulative, self-serving (though honest about that) sociopath, it wasn't entirely clear just where (literally and figuratively) or when his manipulation of Leo was happening.  Presumably in Leo/Requiem's head, activating the latent "pit trap," but Leo's sudden twist re-emergence here, his confrontation with a stunned Requiem makes that far less certain.  And so much more compelling.