Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

From The Beginning: WildStorm Universe

From The Beginning: WildStorm Universe – Stormwatch #14-16

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[Patreon-Nov16-Post-Bug][/Patreon-Nov16-Post-Bug]Today we’re back to Stormwatch, and if I wasn’t adhering to a reading schedule this month you better believe I would be holed up in a corner reading nothing but Stormwatch because the suspense of reaching #25 is killing me.

Thanks to a brief tag with the time-traveling Timespan on issue #16 that loops back to his prologue in issue #9, it seems we’re meant to read this post’s issues and the prior one’s in a single self-affirming swath of doom.

Ron Marz spends this trio of issues delivering two of the kind of globe-trotting adventures we expect from the team, but the international action will be the farthest thing from your mind. That’s because he not only turns up the pressure on Battalion’s impending doom, but takes the time to finally make the equally doomed Diva a more round character (albiet with a lame “I’ll make you a better person” romance with Cannon).

stormwatch_v1_014Penciller Mat Broome is joined by Joe Phillips on Stormwatch #14, and combined with a totally new crew on colors it has some awkward moments. It’s a fine issue to work out those kinks, since despite containing some action Ron Marz’s script mostly focused on relationships and mercy.

We quickly learn why Battalion was so eager to take a leave of absence in the last arc. It wasn’t for peace and quiet – it was so he could infiltrate Skywatch and murder his father in his cryo-sleep! As he lurks in the so-called “Ice Box,” we get a glimpse of past foes like Talos, future ones like Stricture, and even some non-threatening figures who must be more than meets the eye. However, he can’t bring himself to kill his father.

We also learn more about the Diva and Cannon romance that has apparently been bubbling under ever since Ron Marz first hinted at it in Stormwatch Special. Their private moment is interrupted when Synergy as Weatherman inserts Stormwatch One into Northern Rwanda to protect refugees from the country’s civil war with strict instructions to engage the enemy only in self defense.stormwatch_v1_014_23When the team (Cannon, leading Diva, the reconstituted Hellstrike, Fahrenheit, and Strafe) finds that all but one of the refugees have already been slaughtered, Cannon takes it upon himself to hunt down the perpetrators and only Diva can stop him (both with reason and ass-kicking) from killing them in revenge.

The issue ends with a brief stinger in Defiles sanctum, where he’s seemingly threatened by Warblade only to discover it’s a shapeshifter named White. Curiously, he plans to deploy White to disrupt the WildCATs, not Stormwatch.

stormwatch_v1_15Stormwatch #15 opens with us still in Defile’s lair, and here we learn what he has in store for Stormwatch – a massive genetically engineered creature incubating in a tank.

Synergy the Weatherman (whose hair is already grown out since last issue) has met with all of Stormwatch One to reprimand them for their actions in the last issue – they’re more of the sort of rogue decisions that got her an unwanted promotion. When she gets to Diva, she has only thanks for her leadership, which leads Diva to confront Cannon about his behavior.

Battalion is starting to lose his cool (and his mind?) about his impending death, but his quiet tinkering time in the workshop is interrupted by the always awful Flashpoint. The brash Stormwatch Prime member goals Battalion into a fight and gets thoroughly whupped.

Their confrontation is interrupted by an all-hands on deck notice from Weatherman. A massive humanoid bearing a device that looks like a bomb is in the process of King Kong-ing its way up Mauna Loa in Hawaii – the largest active volcano in the world. Stormwatch One heads in, lead by Battalion and comprised of everyone except the unstable trio of Stormwatch Prime.

stormwatch_v1_16Mat Broome and colorist Steve Firchow have settled in on Stormwatch #16, which makes for a crackling climactic issue. (Weirdly, there is a single page colored flatly without digital gradients, and it looks amazing. It goes to show that Broome’s talent isn’t all in the digital trickery of the coloring.)
The assembled Stormwatch One is unable to dent the massive purple creature sent by Defile despite multiple attacks. Battalion distracts it long enough to get in close and rip the bomb away from where it’s grafted on the creature’s back.

We’ve seen both Hellstrike and Winter contend with massive explosions in recent issues, but Battalion takes it upon himself to absorb this detonation within a bubble of psychic power. Timespan drops by to witness him doing the deed just long enough to stop Diva from interfering. Battalion contains the blast, but his body is left limp and lifeless in its wake.

Artist Trevor Scott stops by to render an epilogue in the past, as Timespan returns to to the unlikely 12th century Normandy for a breather. Despite his seemingly random choice, the fellow traveller we glimpsed back in Gen13 #1/2 catches up to him and says she’ll end his “tampering.”

Ah, is Timestream not as benevolent as he lead us to believe? He slips away after a punishing blast from Nadia to return to his Prologue scene from Stormwatch #9 – which means he whisked Battalion to the future straight from overseeing his death!

Here’s the schedule for the rest of this month’s WildStorm re-read. It’s going to be another tortuous week before we’re back to Stormwatch to see what happens in the wake of Battalion’s death. Tomorrow we break ground on a new series, Backlash #1-4!

Need the issues? You’ll need to purchase single issues – try eBay (#14-16) or Amazon (#14, 15, 16). Since further series reached these same issue numbers, be sure to match your purchase to the cover images in this post.

From The Beginning: WildStorm Universe – Wetworks (1994) #1-3

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[Patreon-Nov16-Post-Bug][/Patreon-Nov16-Post-Bug]Whilce Portacio makes his slightly-delayed entrance into WildStorm with Wetworks, originally previewed in WildCATs #2 in 1992. It’s also the first true origin story of WildStorm other than Gen13 – in no other book this far have we watched as an entire cast of heroes has been created.

Portacio was of the same generation of beloved X-Men artists as Jim Lee and Marc Silvestri and was originally intended to be the seventh founder of Image Comics – with Wetworks as one of its flagship books. An illness in his family caused him to step away from the  launch of Image, and it took him two years to make his entry – now part of the WildStorm table rather than its own imprint.

wetworks_v1_01(Since these issues were written as much as two years prior to their release, they occur in story order prior to Gen13. As confirmation, we see that John Lynch is still with IO. They likely fit sometime just prior to Killer Instinct.)

Wetworks is a completely different flavor of team than WildCATs and Stormwatch. It’s a nearer neighbor to Deathblow, or even the Underworld film series. It’s all about big guns, synthetic symbiotes, and bloody ops, but also about vampires!

Back when it was intended to be part of Image’s launch, Wetworks was teased briefly in a four-page back-up in WildCATs #2. All we learned in thie brief story is that the team’s leader, Dane, is bulletproof and loves causing carnage.

Wetworks seems to be exactly the sort of “extreme” team title that Jim Lee wanted to veer away from on Gen13. Every member is dipped in gold from head to toe and festooned with guns, ammo, cybernetic enhancements, and ridiculous gear. There’s a slight hint of Wetworks being an anti-terrorist or maybe anti-war-crimes group, but mostly the our pages are about setting the tone – they’re a team of Punishers.

Wetworks #1 begins at least a few weeks prior to that preview. Prior to their golden years, Wetworks are the modern-day Team 7 – a team of well-armed but decidedly-human soldiers lead by original Gen12 member Dane (who maybe isn’t entirely human – we’ll see).

Portacio along with Brandon Choi on script mines the same geopolitical concerns we’ve seen across WildStorm, including how world peacekeeping has an undertow of political oneupmanship. Team 7 believe they sent to rescue hostages in Transylvania by the omnipresent International Operations (I.O.), but really they were being sacrificed – either to test the efficacy of newly developed symbiotic skins or to test the hardiness of the tribe of vampires infesting the area. Maybe both.

The sacrifice doesn’t go as planned, and the team comes away with nigh-indestructible, golden, synthetic, symbiotic skins seemingly permanently attached to their own. They also come away beholden to a decidedly sketchy member of the National Security Council, who is hip to the vampire threat and focused on destroying them. WetWorks is more interested in destroying the I.O. players who burned them on their Transylvania mission, but they’re happy to kill some vampires along the way.

wetworks_v1_02That first issue is a visual stunner that’s all edge-of-your-seat action – a perfect pilot episode. Whilce Portacio’s style is adjacent to Lee’s, with slightly more penstrokes and slightly more emotive faces. He lends a real world weightiness to high-octane military action that most big-guns books are missing. While #2-3 aren’t quite as perfect, there’s no denying this is a visually stunning book. Portacio does decent blood and gore, but his fight choreography can be a bit stiff. His human moments are better.

My main critique is that the team is just too big and too homogenous for any reader to keep track of –  even before they all turn gold! I’m even not sure how many of them there are. Maybe seven?

Choi doesn’t help by switching between their given last names and their call signs. It couldn’t have hurt to throw in more than just a single woman, some different body types, or someone non-white with distinct features. Even after the membership is thinned out by the end of this arc I can’t keep them straight. I’ve maybe got three of them down.

Without being able to tell the team apart, they read as a single lump with a relatively undifferentiated set of personalities. As a result, I found it difficult to get emotionally invested in their success, starting with their evacuation from Transylvania in #1 by the mysterious cybernetic Mother One. So many innocent soldiers wind up dying to abet their escape that as readers we’re almost forced to dislike them, although most of that blame can be shifted to their mysterious collaborator Mother One. Given that she also sacrifices Wetworks members in the name of science in issue #3, I think we’re right not to trust her.

wetworks_v1_03It’s much easier to follow and sympathize with the pair of warring vampire factions, and when your book is having trouble getting the reader to root against vampires you might be having some problems. One faction wants to infect a the attendees of a fictional goth Grateful Dead band’s big show. The band happens to also be vampires from the other faction, whose queen is as obsessed with Wetwork’s leader Dane as she was with Hitler.

In the absence of caring about the team, the most interesting element of the book could be the symbiotic skins themselves. What is their origin? How can some of the vampires communicate with them? What was their intended use?

Wetworks is going to be an intriguing read if it can keep the focus as much on the the vampire-busting gore as on the mysteries behind it. However, it’s going to get old pretty quickly. if this turns into Venom as Punisher vs. Vampires.

Need the issues? These three issues have been collected as Wetworks: Rebirth (ISBN 978-1887279338), which you’ll find cheaper on eBay than Amazon. Or, you can purchase single issues – try eBay (#1-3) or Amazon (#1, 2, 3). Since further Wetworks series hit these same issue numbers, be careful to pick up issues from the 1994 series – an easy way to tell the difference is that Mike Carey is the writer on the later relaunch.

Here’s the schedule for the rest of this month’s WildStorm re-read – tomorrow we read just a pair of issues – WildCATS #14 and Savage Dragon #13, part of the Image X-Over month.

From The Beginning: WildStorm Universe – Stormwatch (1993) #11-13

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[Patreon-Nov16-Post-Bug][/Patreon-Nov16-Post-Bug]Stormwatch’s grim countdown to issue #25 is underway, with 14 issues, a special, and a .5 issue between here and calamity.

stormwatch_v1_011That’s the maximum lifespan of Battalion and Diva. While there is always the chance for a late-stage bait and switch in comic books, seeing them both dead in #25 seems to drive home that the fate will be inescapable for at least one of them. Every moment is filled with danger – you half-expect everyone to explode into a million pieces just for talking.

This trio of issues is about politcal intrigue, both within Stormwatch and from outside of it via the UN Executive council. They’realso our first stories focused on the taciturn Winter and the underused Hellstrike. We begin on Stormwatch One (Battalion, Diva, Fuji, Winter, and Strafe) mopping up Russian rebels in Siberia, which the council seems to take extra glee in interrupting to call a spur-of-the-moment meeting on sanctions for Battalion’s actions in Gamorra in issues #6-7 and in Japan in #10.

In the wake of the meeting (and Weatherman’s dismissal), Winter will have to return to quell the remainder of the conflict while others work desperately to prevent Hellstrike from blowing up all of SkyWatch!

Ron Marz has a firm grasp of the team and their personalities. He intercuts more nimbly between stories that Choi, which puts almost the entire Stormwatch cast into play in these issues. Finally, all of the various energy-projecting dudes are starting to feel distinct from each other!

Specifically, Cannon settles into being a decent guy with a hot-tempered streak, whereas Flashpoint is full-on awful (though, that could simply be Defile’s torture via Deathtrap working as planned). Sunburst is mostly silent until a final scene of him transmitting details of the WildCats to Defile. However, the women are given short shrift – Diva remains a cardboard cutout of a reliable #2, and Fahrenheit and Nautika are complete cyphers.

Fuji has been the source of so many low-key laughs along the way so far that he’s the perfect character to deploy to lend depth to the shallow Hellstrike’s medical challenges, which I had honestly forgotten about since #7. Things really do grind to a halt in #12 for a deep dive into Hellstrike’s psyche – not only because he’s a fringe character in this drama, but because #25 gave us no hints of his relevance to the longer plot line. It’ll be interesting to see how his transformation into a being of pure energy like his colleague Fuji will affect Stormwatch in the long run.

Winter proves to be a more satisfying point-of-view character, as he’s come through for the team so many times in the series so far. While his Cold War enemy is straight from a standard-issue Iron Man plot, seeing Winter pushed to his limits both as a super-human and as a leader is satisfiying.

stormwatch_v1_013_08Meanwhile, the twist of letting go our bald-headed Weatherman, named Henry Bendix, is a shocker … but not as much of a shocker as Synergy taking up the mantle, complete with the shaved head! Even with the preparation of knowing she was Weatherman in #25 doesn’t prepare you for the abruptness of the change.

New artist Mat Broome takes only a few pages to settle into his take on the team. He draws a ridiculous, hulking Battalion. seriously, he is almost as big as Hulk!

On the whole, his pencils are satisfying and still of the caliber you expect from Image. All of his faces have a slightly pinched quality, but he’s good at expressions that sell the dialog – a pretty rare delight from a 90s superhero artist. Also, the digital coloring makes a leap forward here, with some complex shading and gradient skin tones.

Taken on their own, this trio of issues could fairly be called Stormwatch’s weakest arc so far. However, in the context of the grander story being told, these stories provide some essential context and humanity for characters beyond just Battalion – suddenly necessary, with his death looming over the book. Marz and Broome successfully maintain the tone established by Choi and Clark as our countdown to doom ticks inexorably forward.

Need the issues? You’ll need to purchase single issues – try eBay (#11-13) or Amazon (#11, 12, 13). Since further Stormwatch series hit these same issue numbers, be careful to pick up issues from the 1993 series.

Here’s the schedule for the rest of this month’s WildStorm re-read – tomorrow we add a new title to the mix Whilce Portacio’s Wetwork’s #1-3!

From The Beginning: WildStorm Universe – Deathblow (1993) #5-9

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[Patreon-Nov16-Post-Bug][/Patreon-Nov16-Post-Bug]Today we’re back to Deathblow, which I found to be wildly uneven on our last go-round. Now, Tim Sale has taken control of the artwork with Brandon Choi still scripting. Is the change enough to flip my opinion on the book?

Before we begin, a quick mea culpa: Lynch is still with IO in this arc, so this should’ve been read before Gen13. Oops! In fact, it might occur entirely between Gen13 #1 and #3 given the time that elapses and based on Lynch departing #9 directly for Gen13 #3. This arc also happens after Stormwatch #9, which means the arrival of the time traveller in Gen13 #1/2 misses Stormwatch #9 by at least a week.

deathblow_007Deathblow is different than all of the other WildStorm books. It’s not just the desaturated colors or the religious overtones, but the small cast combined with sense that the plot is paramount. It feels as though the story might keep heaving onward even if Deathblow decided not to show up. At points in this arc it feels like he’s an anchor dragging behind the good versus evil aspects of the story, until the final pages of issue #9 manage to reel him in.

All of the plot points teased in issues #1-4 collapse into a single story here – Deathblow’s faith and his cancer, Travis’s untrustworthiness, the miracle boy in Philadelphia, the Black Angel, the Order of the Cross, and more. They felt like a lot of random information, but it turns out they’re all part of the same plot.

There’s an inherent tension between the scenes with Deathblow, terse and rippling with muscle, and the supernatural plot, which could be ripped straight from… well, Supernatural, to use a modern example. The sense that Deathblow himself isn’t of this paranormal world is tangible, even as we learn those closest to him have already been inducted.

Add to that the constant suspense of how Deathblow’s Gen-Active powers will present themselves (aside from being impervious to gun shots and stab wounds, that is), and this mystery has suddenly become almost as much as a page-turner as Stormwatch.

This leads me to marvel at the incredible powers of Brandon Choi, perhaps for the 15th day in a row. This man was plotting the entire WildStorm Universe, with each book wildly different in style than the last. Choi really settles in to the terse vibe of Deathblow here. It feels like it has its own voice moreso than the initial run.

Now the permanent artist (save for covers), Tim Sale imbues the book the sort of stark, crime noir look it’s needed all along. He deploys Lee’s style of fine detail only when warranted. While you’ll immediately be yearning for Jim Lee’s over-the-top version of Deathblow himself just because it looked so damned good, everything else about the book is a better fit for the story. Seen through a noir lens, it all makes more sense.

New with issue #6, colorist Linda Medley keeps the desaturated color palette but loses the sickly photo-negative greenish cast. This could be hindsight talking, but digital colors pull attention away from Tim Sale’s stately art. What I wouldn’t give to see a modern colorist like Matt Hollingsworth apply a vintage palette and lack of gradients to these issues. They deserve even plainer colors and starker contrast.

By the end of the arc, all of our characters (including a nun cop, the angel of death, and Director Lynch!) converge on a convent outside of Philadelphia for a bloody battle that entirely alters the course of Deathblow’s life – and definitely his comic book!

I’m not sure if I should recommend this book to you or not! Choi and Sale have made a remarkable turnaround with this arc, but I won’t be sure it was worth the ride until we see how it begins to be resolved.

Need the issues? Deathblow #5-9 (and on through #12) were collected in a 1999 TPB titled “Sinners and Saints.” DC issued a revised, expanded, and re-ordered HC and TPB of #0-12 that both are still readily available. For single issues try eBay (#5-9) or Amazon (#5, 6, 7, 8, 9) – and note that Amazon offers these issues digitally(!) through Comixology.

Here’s the schedule for the rest of this month’s WildStorm re-read – tomorrow we’re back to Stormwatch (already!) with #11-13.

From The Beginning: WildStorm Universe – Gen13 #1-5 & 1/2

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[Patreon-Nov16-Post-Bug][/Patreon-Nov16-Post-Bug]Gen13 was a massive bombshell when it struck in 1994, a comic about college-aged kids that actually looked and felt like it was about real college-aged kids because it was being drawn by one while also revealing a ton of backstory and connective tissue about the two-year-old WildStorm Universe.

And you know what? It’s still every bit as great today – even moreso after spending the past two weeks reading all of the comics that lead up to it.

gen13-1994-001The cast of Gen13 were some of Jim Lee’s final creations in the early years of WildStorm. In an interview in Gen13 #1/2, he discusses being motivated to move away from the gear-laden extreme look (and the violence that accompanies it) that many classic characters at Marvel and DC were moving towards. (The irony of the entire team wielding guns on the cover from Lee is not lost on me). He also intentionally created Caitlin Fairchild as a literal strong female who was also super-smart – an obvious choice to lead the team.

It’s Lee’s focus on creating a different book rather than an imitation of something familiar that makes Gen13 so memorable. Caitlin Fairchild may not yet be a Tony Stark level genius, but her hairpin turn from ingénue to terrorist and leader never seems rushed given the breadth of her intellect and depth of her drive. It’s the same way almost all of Marvel’s original generation of male heroes are depicted as super-brains of some sort to explain their mastery of all things. Marvel has scant women who fit the same mold (at the time, just Mockingbird and Kitty Pryde), and none who also lead a team.

(Lee also included a buff, masculine, hyper-sexual Asian male with Grunge (a rarity even today) and an indigenous woman with Rainmaker who… well, we’ll get to that later.)

If we’re going to talk about the unique touches that make this book stand out, we have to discuss artist J. Scott Campbell. Campbell was discovered at age 19 in the talent search advertised in WildC.A.T.s #2! Prior to Gen13, his only published comics work was portions of Stormwatch #0, Deathmate Black, and pin-ups.

That’s it!

To go from obscurity to co-creating one of the most popular mini-series of the 90s is unbelievable. His achievement is made more incredible by the fact that he’s not specifically aping any single Image founder. Campbell draws distended, hyper-tall figures like Liefeld, he details muscles and clothes like Lee, and he has the fussy sketch lines of Silvestri. Campbell’s characters are all visually distinct and exciting as regular people wearing clothes, and his backgrounds and buildings are bristling with detail.

To have a 19-year-old designing 19-year-olds is part of the kinetic magic of Gen13. In fact, Lee reveals that Campbell designed Roxy AKA Freefall, who is by far the most visually distinct of all the Gen13 kids. Yes, Campbell errs on the side of some egregious T&A at points, but he’s seemingly just as eager to show nearly-nude men as he is women – he’s a kid who just wants to draw hot kids being hot. Also, the present-day fashion aspect of his pencils is powerful – Roxy the club kid, Caitlin’s mousy Princeton get-up, Bliss’s S&M dresses, Grunge’s early-90s flannels.

Yet, great art alone does not make for a good Image title – or else I’d be head over heels in love with WildCATs instead of constantly dissing it. The script here is wonderful. Brandon Choi was great on Stormwatch, but he was never better on early Image than on this initial run of Gen13 collaborating with Campbell (who picks up a story credit by the third issue). Characters all have distinct voices, details make sense, and each issue has its own rising and falling action. Caitlin Fairchild as our point-of-view character is so analytical that it makes perfect sense for her to issue a recap via narration at the beginning of each issue.

gen13-1994-005It’s not just the Gen13 kids who make this story interesting, but I.O director John Lynch finally being fleshed out into a dynamic character instead of just a conniving government villain. If you’ve read any WildStorm up to this point, he hasn’t exactly been a sympathetic character (except for maybe in WildCATs #2 when he doesn’t arrest the team). That’s especially true coming from reading Kindred, where he seemed as hugely unsympathetic as ever!

Here we see another side of him. It’s not a sudden turn, but a transformation that makes sense for his character. For all of his heartless decisions over the years, he does have regrets – chief amongst them the raw deal many of his Team 7 teammates got if they didn’t go underground or let I.O. control their lives. That guilt means he cannot in good conscience support a renewed Genesis program – especially one that preys on the children of his teammates!

As I re-read this mini-series, I repeatedly asked myself: Are you seeing this through rose-colored glasses? Is this the joy of nostalgia talking?

I’ll admit a little buzz of returning to these characters, but given the sheer volume of comics I read, I don’t think my delight in Gen13 can be purely attributed to huffing the fumes of the 90s.

This is a good comic book that’s a perfect artifact of the times – even the gratuitous mid-mini-series guest appearance by Pitt.

Want the play-by-play? Keep reading for an extensive summary of this book, a major influence on me and an early inspiration to my 8th Grade version of Krisis. Here’s the schedule for the rest of this month’s WildStorm re-read. Tomorrow we’ll finally make it back around to Deathblow, now with Tim Sale in control of art duties. Will I like it better this time around?

Need the issues? Gen13 was such a massive, game-changing hit that it’s the rare WildStorm book that’s been through several reprints. Here are the three you should focus on:

  • The 1998 Gen13 Archives (ISBN 978-1887279918) is a great, comprehensive collection that includes all of these issues and pushes through #13 of their ongoing series and isn’t too hard to track down all these years later (Amazon / eBay).
  • Gen13: Who They Are and How They Came to Be (978-1401211493) is a 1996 collection of just this mini-series (not including #1/2) (Amazon / eBay). If you go that route, also pick up Gen13 Backlist (ISBN 1-887279-41-5), which includes #1/2 and some other one-shots (Amazon / eBay).
  • A Gen13: Complete Collection is due in spring of 2017 that covers through #7 of the ongoing, but includes the special Gen13: Rave issue not in Archives (Amazon pre-order).

Alternately, you can purchase single issues – try eBay (#1-5 & 1/2, AKA #-1) or Amazon (#1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 1/2 AKA #-1 and alternative search #1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 1/2 AKA #-1) – and note that Amazon offers these issues digitally(!) through Comixology.

Keep in mind that as a key issue #1 can be pricey on its own but there were plenty of these printed, so you’ll probably be better served buying a lot of the entire mini-series. Since several future Gen13 series hit these same issue numbers, be sure to match your purchase to the images in this post (note that #5 has two different covers). The Gen13 #1 with 13 different covers is not this #1 – it’s the first issue of their subsequent ongoing. [Read more…] about From The Beginning: WildStorm Universe – Gen13 #1-5 & 1/2