K.A. Percival has been dead for five years.
This is the news she receives when she awakens suddenly from a deep coma, immediately confronted with devastating news that her father was killed by a rogue group of Powered Armor weilders known as the Junkyarders, and her team of teen heroes, the Wirecats, has gone up in smoke. But some vestiges of her life still remain, and now she has a chance to start over in a world that is in many ways worse than when she left it.
We Are The Wirecats
is the spiritual successor to Ruby Nation and also a reboot of itself, tackling similar ideas from a different angle.
Examples of tropes in this webcomic:
- Anachronic Order: The comic opens with the main character waking up from a five-year coma with plenty of past events waiting to be fleshed out.
- Animal Motifs: The Wirecats suits are all cat-themed.
- Art Evolution: Quite a few changes to the character designs were made during this comic's reboot from the original iteration.
- Break the Cutie: K.A.’s introduction to the waking world after recovering from a coma is…sobering, to put it lightly.
- Calling Your Attacks: Bryce liked to do this back in the day. To a lesser extent, the suits respond to voice commands, for example activating with the command “hard-wire.”
- The Cameo: Shout-outs and references are sprinkled in all over the place for the attentive.
- Creator Thumbprint: Many themes present in the author's previous works are here as well. This includes Animal Motifs, deconstruction of the superhero genre, Idealism vs. Cynicism, characters with disabilities, and cats.
- Chuunibyou: All of the kids back in the day, to some extent. Bryce, five years later, is particularly embarrassed of his past self.
- Colorful Theme Naming: Each of the Wirecats suits are named by the main color of the suit; Leopard Green, Serval Red, Manul Pink, and Caracal Blue.
- Genius Sweet Tooth: The kids used to share a beverage called a Neko Moka after finishing a project. Tadao notes that it has a ridiculous amount of sugar in it.
- Glowing Mechanical Eyes: The Wirecats suits tend to have these.
- Handicapped Badass: All of the members of the Wirecats have some sort of mental or physical disability. They also possessed—-and in fact developed—some truly state-of-the-art Powered Armor.
- Hero Does Public Service: More or less, this was the original goal of the Wirecats, albeit with a lot of flash.
- Interrupted Suicide: K.A. doesn’t even hesitate to spring into action to stop a suicide attempt. The person she stops is rather indignant about it at first, but K.A.’s genuine concern and vulnerability seems to shakily win her over.
- Kid Hero: The Wirecats consists of a group of brilliant students with idealistic dreams of making the world a better places with their feats and inventions. It went very poorly for them.
- Lensman Arms Race: After the Junkyarders attack the Wirecats expo, United States defense departments immediately take this as an excuse to mass-produced weapon-class Powered Armor from the Wirecats’ designs. The result has only made tensions rise in the last five years.
- Knight in Sour Armor: Right off the bat, Bryce is very hesitant to think the old team even has a chance of fixing the world. Despite his disillusionment, he still doesn’t hesitate to offer K.A. his support.
- Mundane Utility: Many of the features of the Wirecats armor are meant to be used as assistive technology. For example, K.A. uses hers to serve as prosthetic legs, as well as blocking out distracting noises to help her cope with her sound sensitivity. In fact, the original purpose of the suits was to be highly adaptable assistive technology, making the Mundane Utility the primary utility.
- My God, What Have I Done?: The effect the Wirecats' technological innovations have had on the world in the hands of politicians and warmongers leaves the old team with quite a bit of guilt, if Bryce's words are anything to go by.
- Nanomachines: One of the prevalent technologies of the setting and heavily integrated into the Wirecats mechanical armor, as well as their own bodies.
- Playful Hacker: Mela casually hacks into the Pentagon and is given the option to join the study group formed by K.A.’s dad…or go to juvie. She accepts the former.
- Powered Armor: The Wirecats armor is precisely this with a hefty dose of nanotechnology for good measure.
- Properly Paranoid: Bryce very paranoid about letting the public discover K.A. is alive, but given the hostility she faces from law enforcement by merely trying to stop a suicide attempt, it’s hard not to understand his stance.
- Scars Are Forever: Despite the impressive nanotechnology that healed her body, K.A. still has a prominent forehead scar.
- The Speechless: Lamar, whose cerebral palsy made him mute, which spurred him to look into technology that would enable him to speak.
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Spiritual Successor:- K.A. is a lot of like Ruby, the protagonist of the creator's previous comic. On a larger scale, this comic appears to be a spiritual successor to Ruby Nation.
- In a meta sense, Wirecats is also spiritual successor to itself, rebooting an older version of the comic with various revisions while still keeping the core themes.
- Super-Speed: One of the abilities Caracal Blue enables.
- Technology Porn: A lot of behind-the-scenes detail goes into how the Wirecats' suits work and the various functions they have.
- Transhuman: The characters’ bodies are fill with nanotechnology that communicates with their suits, as well as certain enhancements to their bodies’ natural processes that make them something more than an ordinary human.
- Wide-Eyed Idealist: What the characters used to be. And what the story is trying its darndest to kick out of them. K.A.’s father, in particular, had a very bright vision of the future.
- Kirk: ”There’s no problem that can’t be fixed with the power of human engineering…”
- You Can't Go Home Again: As much as she wishes she could pick up where she left off, the world just isn't the same place K.A. used to know.
