YMMV / Blood Syndicate

• Complete Monster:
  • "Mother" is the leader of SYSTEM's Amber Cell, the division of the supervillain conspiracy responsible for biological experimentation. Mother kidnaps droves of Bang Babies to have them tortuously experimented on, alive and begging for death, until they expire. Mother fills up meat lockers with the bodies of failed experiments, dismissing them all as raw meat, and brainwashes many of the few survivors into obedient weapons for SYSTEM. Mother is also a horrendous boss, blowing out the brains one of her own men for messing up an assignment and trying to have another of her own men "retired", partly due to the man's rebellion but also due to him being stuck with terminal cancer.
  • The Demon Fox, the Lord of Lies, is a sinister spirit and the sister of the Chinese warrior Kwai. As part of a divine game arranged by her and Kwai's sociopathic immortal father, the Jade Emperor, the Demon Fox has lived for seventy-seven cycles killing and ruining everything around her for fun, earning her sobriquet by tormenting her victims with twisted lies. Invoked to kill the Blood Syndicate by the corrupt John Wing, the Demon Fox mentally breaks and brutalizes them first before casually snapping Wing's neck after she feels she's fulfilled his wishes. The Demon Fox continues to play more mind games with the team while posing as John Wing's wife, convincing Masquerade to impersonate the Blood Syndicate's deceased leader for so long Masquerade loses her identity, and possibly even making Brickhouse miscarry her child. Even when freed from the game by Kwai, the Demon Fox spitefully states she'll continue to deny her sister anything close to a loved one for the rest of their lives.
  • The Jade Emperor himself is the series' Greater-Scope Villain and the immortal father of Kwai and the Demon Fox. The Jade Emperor has had hundreds of daughters and set up Kwai in particular into a Vicious Cycle where her psychopath of a sister would slaughter everything around them and engineer cataclysms. Every life stolen over seventy-seven cycles by the Demon Fox and all the agony has occurred in Kwai's life is primarily so the Jade Emperor and his buddies have a cheap game to routinely gamble on. When Kwai finally reaches him and begs him to be free of the cycle, the Jade Emperor decides to grant her wish by condemning his daughter to death without resurrection. Ultimately, the terrible cycle in which the Jade Emperor has trapped his daughters can only fully be broken by Kwai sacrificing herself to take down the Demon Fox.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Aquamaria is one of the less prominent team members due to the Language Barrier and is one of the few characters to almost be killed off, but she's one of the most popular characters for the Hispanic representation she provides and her Blessed with Suck Elemental Powers.
• Moral Event Horizon: John Wing, leader of the Coalition in the early issues, doesn't initially seem to be much at first when he's completely thrashed by the Blood Syndicate and sent running away with tears in his eyes. In the sixth issue, however, Wing flies over the horizon when he murders his pregnant wife to summon a demonic entity to kill his enemies in payback for being humiliated, leading to the most brutal, sadistic thrashing the team ever receives as a result. While Wing does show some regrets over the situation, he exults in the feeling he gets when he knows he's "damned for eternity," allowing the Demon Fox he summoned to kill him at the end without a moment's regret.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Tech-9. The series might not have covered the groundbreaking areas it did if he remained leader, but his charisma and unique firearms-based powers make it disappointing that he's killed off after just five issues rather than remaining part of the team in a non-leadership capacity.
• Watched It for the Representation: Like many Milestone titles, minority characters are the heroes, but this series has an entire team of well-developed characters from a wide range of ethnicities and backgrounds (African-American, Asian, Hispanic, homosexual, and transexual, sometimes with overlap), and attracts more of this sentiment than most of its other titles.