Joe Casey

WildCATs – Definitive Collecting Guide & Reading Order

The definitive issue-by-issue comic book collecting guide and reading order for WildCATs in omnibus, hardcover, trade paperback, and digital comics. Find every issue and appearance! Part of Crushing Krisis’s Crushing Comics Guide to Collecting Indie & Licensed Comics. Last updated April 2023 with titles scheduled for release through August 2023.

In 1992 there was no hotter artist in comics than Jim Lee. That meant his Image Comics flagship title WildCATs launched to immediate and massive popularity – maybe even before Lee and his creations were ready for it.

Jim Lee pencilled his first issue of X-Men with writer Chris Claremont in May of 1989 with Uncanny X-Men (1963) #248. X-Men was already one of the most-popular comic books in America, but Lee’s gradually takeover as the primary artist from fellow Image founder Marc Silvestri elevated its popularity into the stratosphere. That popularity climax two years later in August 1991 when the launch of X-Men (1991) #1 became the highest-selling modern comic, selling millions of copies driven largely by Lee’s complete redesign of the cast as splayed across four covers.

Lee’s final work on X-Men arrived just a year later on X-Men (1991) #11 in August 1992 – the same month he launched WildC.A.T.s (1992) #1 at Image Comics with childhood friend Brandon Choi on scripting duties. In the interim, Lee’s character designs started pop up everywhere – from merchandise, to toys, to the revered X-Men: The Animated Series – which debuted in October 31, 1992. No other comic artist had more visibility for their work than Lee in the early 90s.

While WildCATs is often labeled as an off-brand X-Men, Lee’s concept for the series is closer to Marvel’s Inhumans and Eternals than their X-Men. The members of his team were all descendants of a pair of warring alien races who crashed to Earth millennia ago. The Kheribum seemed brave and majestic while the Daemonites in their truest form resembled Aliens or The Brood. The team payed out that ancient conflict in the modern day, making peace between Kheribum factions and hunting rogue Daemonites. (Over the course of the series, we learned that those first impressions weren’t the whole truth).

Lee had proven to be a fast penciller on X-Men, but he was now penciler, plotter, and co-founder of what was suddenly the most-popular comic company in America. The entire Image Comics line was hit by delays, including WildCATs. Lee was determined to pencil every issue of his pet creations, but filled in the gaps between his issues with a Special and a three-issue limited series penciled by Jae Lee. The book was always gorgeous, especially in a marquee crossover with Marc Silvestri’s Cyberforce. However, the plot and script never quite stood up to the majestic pencils. This is where the book slipped into X-Men comparisons, with familiar character archetypes that felt a lot like Cyclops, Jean, Wolverine, and more.

Lee lasted just two more issues on WildCATs than he did on his X-Men relaunch, bowing out of regular penciling duties with issue #13 in September 1994. Scripter Brandon Choi departed the title with Lee, turning it over first to James Robinson with Travis Charest through issue #20, and later to the grand wizard himself, Alan Moore in July 1995. While Robinson hewed close to Lee & Choi’s original concept, Moore exploded the cast and concept to focus on societal conflicts within both alien factions.

While Robinson and Moore were ultimately good for the growing lore of the team, that meant that the “classic” WildCATs line-up only had a year of surface-level stories for fans to enjoy. Meanwhile, that initial cast (along with Lee’s designs) were featured in an animated series that launched in 1994 with an accompanying toy line. As the comic grew increasingly intellectual and far less toyetic through the 90s and into the early 2000s, many fans still had an expectation that it would “play the hits” of its first two years of issues (when really there weren’t many “hits” in that run).

WildCats has been revived several times over after Lee sold his WildStorm creations to DC Comics in 1998 and joined the company as an executive. However, Stormwatch’s transformation into the mega-popular The Authority took the spotlight off of WildCats as the marquee team of the WildStorm universe. It was Stormwatch and Authority that continued to generate higher-selling series with more spinoffs. Meanwhile, a fourth WildCATs volume meant to be scripted by Grant Morrison and pencilled by Lee fizzled after just one issue in 2006.

In 2008 Christos Gage relaunched WildCATs (alongside an Authority relaunch) with an all-inclusive, fan-pleasing cast alongside an equally-massive, world-ending plot. In a way, this volume felt the closest to Lee, Choi, and Robinson’s original 20 issues, even though it took advantage of the swell of characters and concepts that had been introduced in the intervening 15 years.

Unfortunately, the run was cut off by DC’s Flashpoint. While individual team members like Grifter and Voodoo graduated into New 52 with their own ongoing titles, New 52 never once brought together the full team, with Warren Ellis launching a completely separate universe of The Wild Storm to reimagine the core of the team.

After a full decade of clamoring from fans, finally DC began to introduce WildStorm characters into their main continuity – including the emergence of Grifter in Gotham City under the pens of James Tynion and Matthew Rosenberg. After much teasing, that lead to WildCats relaunch at the end of 2022. Shortly after, DC announced plans for The Authority to be one of the anchors of their new cinematic universe. After years on the margins of DC Comics, 2023 finally found Jim Lee’s WildCats and Stormwatch back in the spotlight in the DC Universe.

New for Patrons: Guide to WildCATs (& WildStorm Events!)

March 8, 2023 by krisis Leave a Comment

I’m back with another Indie Comics Month guide for all Patrons of CK! This is the guide that was the first itch I had to create indie comics guides more than six years ago when I first launched mu Patreon campaign! At the time, I couldn’t believe that anyone would spend time on a guide page for an Image launch title from 1992 whose comics continuity was dead in the water. Now it has a hot new book to its name in the main DC Universe! That’s right, it’s time for a guide to Image’s fourth flagship title, the co-flagship of Jim Lee’s WildStorm imprint that later joined him at DC Comics. It’s a brand new Guide to WildCATs.

Guide to WildCATs
This guide is now available to all readers thanks to the wild ongoing support of Patrons of Crushing Krisis!

(Bonus: I also launched a quick Guide to WildStorm Events with every line-wide event in reading order.)

I know this material well, not only because I loved WildCATs back in the 90s, but because I was in the middle of putting together a complete run of WildCATs for binding when we moved to New Zealand! I have personally hunted down every issue in this guide without the help of a guide. This is a page that held absolutely no surprises for me.

That’s not the case for WildCATs itself, which I think is a book that would surprise a lot of people if they read beyond the famous first thirteen issues by Jim Lee. [Read more…] about New for Patrons: Guide to WildCATs (& WildStorm Events!)

Uncanny X-Men in the 00s – Definitive Collecting Guide to Uncanny X-Men #394-545

The definitive issue-by-issue comic book collecting guide and trade reading order for the 2000s trade paperback era of Uncanny X-Men comic books from 2001 to 2011 in omnibus, hardcover, and trade paperback collections – including runs by Chuck Austen, Chris Claremont, Ed Brubaker, Matt Fraction, & Kieron Gillen and events like House of M, Messiah Complex, Second Coming, & Fear Itself! Part of Crushing Krisis’s Crushing Comics. Last updated March 2023 with titles scheduled for release through August 2023.

Uncanny X-Men (1963) #394 – 545: The Trade Paperback Era (1991 – 2001)

The X-Men franchise reached a crossroads in 2001 that would forever alter its direction, but also usher in a decade of substantial runs penned by just five authors – all of which was collected upon initial release starting with issue #410!

That’s why I think of this final decade of Uncanny X-Men as “The Trade Paperback Era.” It was the beginning of the idea of X-Men being “written for trade,” with tidy 4-6 issue story arcs rather than bursts of shorter stories and one-shot issues.

The slick, black leather costumes of the first Fox X-Men film existed in the public consciousness in 2001, but X-Men comics of the period were a hard-to-parse mess of neon spandex. Not only that, but Marvel’s newly-launched Ultimate Spider-Man reimagining of Spider-Man for the modern day was proving to be massively popular. An Ultimate X-Men followed at the beginning of 2001 that felt closer in style and tone to the films.

Together, these two changes allowed Marvel to experiment with the core of the X-Men franchise. Writer and actual psychedelic warlock Grant Morrison reimagined X-Men (1991) as the sci-fi, leather-clad, and frequently absurd New X-Men. Meanwhile, X-Force metamorphosed into X-Statix under the guidance of Peter Milligan and Mike Allred.

What’s often forgotten is that Uncanny X-Men also relaunched at the same time. Twice, actually! First, Joe Casey took the reins for a similarly leather-bound and slightly-absurdist take on X-Men. Then, midway through Morrison’s run, Uncanny swapped to author Chuck Austen.

Austen’s run is often reviled for its soap opera elements, as well as for deeply unpopular moments for Nightcrawler and Angel. Despite that, it remains very much in the Claremontian tradition of constantly-churning conflict and romance. It often introducing wild concepts from far outside the X-Men’s typical range of influences.

Chris Claremont himself would return as Austen’s replacement with The New Age in 2004. While opinions remain split on this run, it’s certainly more popular than his prior return on “Revolution.” The New Age finds Claremont intermingling new toys and old favorites, writing a team that includes Storm and Rachel Summers, but also playing with Bishop and X-23. His run crossed the House of M event that would decimate Marvel’s mutant population, though he did not deal with the fallout – instead, choosing to focus more on Rachel and the return of Psylocke.

Ed Brubaker took over from Claremont with an audacious change in direction. Brubaker followed up on his Deadly Genesis mini-series by taking a core of X-Men to space for Rise and Fall of the Shi’ar Empire. The cosmic plot lasted for an entire year of comics and lead into the massive War of Kings event. It eschewed many popular mainstays of the team for a cast of Xavier, Havok, Polaris, Nightcrawler, Rachel Summers, and Warpath – along with the Starjammers. Afterward, Brubaker refocused on Earth, steering the flagship towards a rebirth from the ashes of Messiah Complex.

Though Brubaker wrote for an arc following Messiah Complex, the following era of the X-Men in San Francisco mostly belongs to Matt Fraction. Fraction reimagines Uncanny X-Men less as a team and more as a society of mutants, with nearly every heroic mutant passing through the background panels of the book at some point in his run. He writes through Dark Reign to the considerable crescendo of Second Coming, a resolution of the remaining threads of House of M.

Finally, Kieron Gillen gradually transitions onto the title over the course of the following year, graduating from Matt Fraction’s secret co-plotter to Fraction’s credited co-writer before finally taking over the reigns with issue #534.1. Gillen slims down Fraction’s massive cast to one foreboding “Extinction Team” lead by the increasingly revolutionary Cyclops and featuring Emma Frost, Wolverine, Magneto, Namor, Storm, Kitty Pryde, Colossus, and Hope. His run continues past the punctuation of Schism through to the following run of Uncanny X-Men, Volume 2.

For a complete X-Men reading order for this period, start with The Definitive X-Men Reading Order: New X-Men.