Welcome to the Acquired Taste Book Club! Now that the Red Skies have left us alone, we’re circling back around to WildStorm Productions!
For today’s selection, we’ll be finishing off what we have left of the original StormWatch series and peeking at a couple more issues of Warren Ellis’ The Wild Storm series, so there’s not much introduction needed.
Reading Assignment: StormWatch (1993-) #7-12 and The Wild Storm (2017-) #2-3
Track the #acquired-taste tag to catch more posts as they come out.
Next week: Well, there ain’t too many Quality characters to actually worry about, so we’ll get back to the one who’s been gone for a… stretch. Eh? Ehhhh? Get it? Plastic Man? “Stretch?” Never mind.
My goodness. Even Chris Claremont would tell you to trim down that monologue.
In all fairness, I did like Dwayne Turner’s art in issue 10. It was moody and not all about pinups and closeups. Even his cheesecake shots look relatively natural:
(Note from the caption that she’s TRYING to look sexy, so it’s even more appropriate in context.) Contrast that image with one from issue 12:
So far I finished #8 earlier this morning, and here’s an interesting thing – this issue has a character named Ripclaw (I know) which is actually still owned by Top Cow/Image.
Here’s the thing: when the big 90s artists set up Image Comics, many of them further made their own imprint – Jim Lee of course made Wildstorm, Rob Liefeld made Extreme, and Marc Silvestri made Top Cow. The thing is, while each were in their own imprints, they would all still crossover, and the ones still in Image continueto do so every so often. In fact, the first arc of WildCATS has a fight/team up with Liefeld’s Youngblood and their second arc is a crossover between it and Cyber Force, which has the aforementioned Ripclaw in the team.
Also, the girl he’s protecting, Rainmaker, I think either already has or will soon be part of another Wildstorm team, Gen13.
I liked these issues better than the first ones. I thought the issue with Ripclaw and Rainmaker, that was a decent read. Most of that characters in this series seem like they would be best suited to bad 80’s action flicks, though - all testosterone and no brains.
The vision of the future seemed interesting enough that I wish we had issue 25 to fill in the blanks for us.
Regarding The Wild Storm, I love what I’ve read of this series. You learn a little more each issue and I dig that. So far my favorite characters are Marlowe and Spica. I wouldn’t compare Stormwatch from this series to the other at all.
If ATBC was secretly running everything, I would join you in said conspiracy, no worries.
Yeah, once it got into the future stuff I got a lot more interested and when I got to the last page I was thinking “No wonder, Ron Marz wrote this!” Between this and his work on Witchblade, I’m convinced it’s his goal in life to take half-baked 90s comics and breathe new life to them.
I think the first couple of issues kind of paled in comparison to the first issues we read, but once Ron Marz got on it picked up very well.
Do you like how the plot with the Warguard is shaping up?
I gotta admit, when I read this question after reading these issues, I kind of still had to look it up online just to make sure I’m understanding the question.
If this is the future plotline, than yes, I’m definitely curious to see how that goes. I mean, considering that I’ve read Wildstorm books after this and it isn’t a post-apocalyptic hellscape (or at least one that isn’t because of this), I know that StormWatch will likely stop it, but I want to see how they do it.
Obviously we don’t have the full fifty-some issue run of the series. Did this section of it leave you with any unanswered questions?
Like I said, I would like to see where the whole stuff with the alternate future goes.
Did you notice how I was able to ask real questions this time?
Do these issues paint a better picture of what’s going on?
I’d say so – it gives a bigger idea of the scale of this story and what they’re doing with these characters. It’s different than what we’re reading in the 90s, but still feels to the core of what they were attempting to do.
Which character is the most interesting so far?
So far I’d say Angie, aka the woman who will be The Engineer, as well as Michael Crey, aka Deathblow. They have the most interesting immediate stories going on. There are other characters I like, but it’s more because of who they were in the past and hope they will be in this story, not so much because of who they are now, if that makes any sense.
The summaries say Skywatch is involved in this, so I’m going to rely on those and ask: How do they compare to their depiction in StormWatch?
So far they are far more mysterious and clandestine here than in the StormWatch issues, which I think makes them work better. I’m curious to see what IO’s non-aggression pact is exactly and how that came about.
If ATBC were a secret conspiracy pulling the strings behind everything on DC Universe, would you expose us? Asking for a friend.
Depends on whether I could get in on the conspiracy.
