Weapon Zero is a science fiction/superhero comic book series created by Joe Benitez and Marc Silvestri. It was published by Top Cow Productions in the 1990s. The production changed hands after issue #4.
Publication history
Weapon Zero launched in June 1995 with a five issue mini-series prologue. This prologue deviated from traditional numbering of each comic in that it started with #T-4(T minus 4) and counted down to #0.
It was followed up in March 1996 with an ongoing series that lasted 15 issues.
Plot
Prologue
Three astronauts are sent to investigate strange energy readings received from the moon's dark side. They discover a hidden base of aliens called the T'srri. Unrah and Juarez are killed, and while Col. Tyson Stone escaped, he is infected with T'srri bio-tech, namely a master logic module. When he returns home, his wife Lorelei reveals herself as a Batai, an alien race who had been at war with the T'srri. She cleanses Stone of the T'srri mindworm that was starting to take over him.
Meanwhile, the T'srri on the base begin to awaken from cold sleep. These are actually humans who had been abducted over a period of 2000 years. They are now being converted by the bio-tech to serve as T'srri. Three children and a dog escape this process: Kikuyo, Jamie, Valaria and Janus are physically altered and gain unique powers, but retain their identities. Back on Earth, Lorelei explains to Stone a little of the war and that new warriors were being sought to fight the T'srri. They are interrupted by N'golth, the T'srri commander of the moonbase, who has come to reclaim the master logic module as he needs this in order to summon the main T'srri force through a dimensional gate. Lorelei faces N'golth and is killed.
N'golth then takes Stone back to the base, and attempts to extract the module from his brain. However Stone escapes using Lorelei’s battle-staff, which merges with him to become a symbiotic armour. He teleports to Earth taking the kids with him. N'golth makes preparations to create a new module from scanned data, and also has Lorelei reanimated as a T'srri. Lorelei tracks Stone through the energy signature of the teleport, and attempts to capture them. However they escape, and this time hide their signal from her. They locate the crash site of two warships which had collided and fallen to Earth, and obtain an anti-matter device on board. They return with this hoping to destroy the T'srri base, but are recaptured and Lorelei reclaims her armour from Stone. By this time, recreation of the module is complete, and N'golth uses it to summon the T'srri Seneschal to Earth. He shows off Lorelei to the Seneschal and explains his intention to fully convert Stone and the children into T'srri as a unit, with Lorelei placed as commander. He names this unit Weapon Zero.
Meanwhile, Janus shape-shifts out of his restraints and releases the others, and Stone finds that he can regenerate another version of his lost Batai armour. Weapon Zero attacks and damages the gate before the waiting T'srri can come through. To prevent his failure being reported, N'golth attempts to kill the Seneschal, who escapes back through the gate. N'golth is unconcerned, as he is sure the damaged gate will scatter the Seneschal into atoms. Meanwhile, Stone faces Lorelei, and activates the anti-matter device still in her armour. Weapon Zero teleports away as the base explodes.
Arsenal Of Democracy
Stone brings the kids to his home, but it explodes due to a Batai security measure left by Lorelei. Finding that none of Stone's friends and neighbours know who he is, they camp outside for the night and in the morning meet an army squad led by Major Arbuckle, who have been sent to investigate after the explosion at the site of Stone's mission to the moon. They are interrupted and captured by a covert organisation calling themselves the Arsenal Of Democracy, who have arrived for the same reason. They bring Weapon Zero to a secret facility beneath the Potomac river and brainwash Stone into working for them. When Weapon Zero break free, he is sent against them. However, Stone has been feigning his indoctrination in order to buy his team-mates time to regroup. They rescue Arbuckle, who sets off a locator beacon for his squad to find them. They escape the base, surface on the river and are rescued by helicopters. When the army later returns to investigate the Potomac, they find no sign the base had ever been there.