Breach No. 1

Breach No. 1, published by DC Comics on January 5, 2005, is the oversized first issue (40 pages, $2.95) of the 11-issue limited series Breach, written by Bob Harras, drawn by Marcos Martin, inked by Alvaro Lopez, colored by Javier Rodriguez, and edited by Matt Idelson. The story opens at a helicopter crash site in Siberia in the winter of an unspecified future year: a mysterious figure in a sealed protective suit protects several Americans, including a senator, and warns everyone not to touch his body, then opens a portal and departs. The narrative then jumps back to April 1983: U.S. Army Major Tim Zanetti, on the eve of his son's fifth birthday, rushes to "Camp Liberty" to take charge of the secret cross-dimensional research project "Project Otherside." When the experiment begins, the device malfunctions and explodes; a dimensional rift pulls Zanetti in, his body torn apart by energy; rescuers who arrive are instantly disintegrated merely by touching him. Zanetti is eventually placed in an isolation chamber and spends more than twenty years in a coma, while his partner Major McClellan has other plans. This issue is the origin chapter of the entire series, establishing Zanetti's military identity, his family life, the accident, and his awakening, and concludes with the note that "he is seen by the military as a new hero, or the next threat." Notably, the series was originally planned to reboot DC's Captain Atom and was changed mid-course into an original character, so residual dialogue in the first issue's main text still calls Zanetti "Major Adams"—a direct footnote to this publishing history.