When the city of Rook, Michigan fell on hard economic times, the state appointed an emergency manager who managed to somehow turn things around, transforming Rook into a high-tech oasis. Most of the residents were relieved to see the city restored, and didn't think too hard about what it might have cost, but Keisha Sherman has her suspicions, especially after the sudden death of her boyfriend, and thus calls upon the secretive Generation Zero to come investigate her town. But the Zeroes have an agenda of their own.
No relation to the 2019 video game by Avalanche Studios.
This series contains examples of:
- Abhorrent Admirer: Cloud is infatuated with Keisha after seeing her thoughts. Keisha is very much put off by this.
- Alpha Bitch: Adele Poole, the daughter of Rook's emergency manager, lords her father's position over all of her classmates.
- Animorphism: Monica can sort of do this (she's actually creating a hard-light image around herself.) Because of her youth and sheltered upbringing, all she knows is cartoon animals. They're still deadly.
- An Arm and a Leg: Rasa's arms and legs were all chopped off in order to keep her from running away or defending herself.
- Big Ol' Unibrow: The Zygos twins both have very pronounced unibrows.
- Body Surf: Gamete can possess other people's bodies temporarily, at the cost of leaving her mother's body vulnerable.
- Boom, Headshot!: Cronus is killed by a bullet to the head in the "Massacre" arc of Harbinger Renegades.
- Brainy Baby: Gamete is a brainy fetus.
- Child Soldiers: The Generation Zero kids were all taken from their biological parents to serve as child soldiers for Project Rising Spirit.
- C-List Fodder: Much of the team ended up being killed off in Harbinger Renegades, with Animalia being the only confirmed survivor.
- Clique Tour: Keisha gives a tour of the cliques at her school to the Zygos Twins so that they can more easily analyze all the students at the school and determine who was most likely to know something about the murder of Keisha's boyfriend.
- Creepy Child: The Zygos Twins are constantly staring at people and analyzing them. Keisha finds it very off-putting.
- Death of a Child: When the team shows up in Renegades, Gamete is shot dead during the attack on Rook.
- Grand Theft Me: Gamete gets around by using her comatose mother's body as transportation.
- Heel–Face Town: Rook, Michigan used to be nearly bankrupt before its emergency manager turned it into a major cutting-edge tech hub. Of course, it's all Powered by a Forsaken Child...
- Hoist by Their Own Petard: Since Adele Poole's superpowers come from an empowerment field produced by her harness, Keisha figures out how to tap into the field, gain superpowers of her own, and kicks Adele's ass.
- Journey to the Center of the Mind: In the third issue, the team ventures into Adele Poole's subconscious in hopes of finding out what she knows about her father's work.
- Jumping Off the Slippery Slope: Once Adele Poole gets superpowers, it takes her no time at all to abuse them.
- Multiple-Choice Future: Telic has the ability to see the flow of time, giving her a limited ability to see multiple futures.
- No Sense of Personal Space: Cloud has uncontrolled telepathy, causing her to see into everyone else's heads simultaneously. She thus feels that she's on intimate terms with everyone, as demonstrated in her first encounter with Keisha, where she flat-out embraces her and kisses her cheek.
- No Social Skills: The Zeroes all grew up in isolation, raised to be living weapons for Project Rising Spirit. Consequently, none of them have much practice in dealing with normal people.
- Powered by a Forsaken Child: The secret of Rook's tech boom is that it all came from a young Iraqi girl named Rasa, who has the power to turn her dreams into reality.
- Raised in a Lab: The kids were all taken from their parents at an early age and raised in a Project Rising Spirit facility. This has left them with considerable deficiencies in their social skills.
- Running Gag: The Generation Zero members describing Keisha as "distressingly normal", which annoys her because of her gothy style of dressing.
- Spin-Off: This series is a spin-off of Harbinger.
- Starfish Language: The Cornermen all speak unintelligible gibberish. This is because they are all products of a little girl's dreams; since the language portions of the human brain aren't engaged during REM sleep, they are incapable of speaking intelligibly.
- Stepford Smiler: One of the side-effects of Gamete piloting her comatose mother's body is that her mother's face is frozen in a perpetual rictus grin.
- Tyke Bomb: The Generation Zero kids were originally raised to serve as an army of child soldiers.
- With Great Power Comes Great Insanity: The harness that grants Abbie Poole her superpowers is fueled by her own belief that she's the hero, which only worsens her own self-delusions to the point that she loses all sense of right and wrong.
- Wrong Genre Savvy: In Adele Poole's mind, she's the underdog protagonist of an Archie-like romance. In reality, she's a Queen Bee who rules over her school's social order with an iron fist.
- Your Mind Makes It Real: All of Rook's advanced technology came from Raza, a small Iraqi girl with the power to make her dreams into reality.
