Wetworks

Every Missing WildStorm Omnibus, Mapped | 2025 Tigereyes Most Wanted DC Omnibus Poll

May 13, 2025 by krisis Leave a Comment

It’s time to map the DC Universe! In June, I’ll be joining with Near Mint Condition to launch the Tigereyes Most Wanted DC Omnibus 2nd Annual Poll! This post explains every WildStorm omnibus that does NOT exist – all of which will appear as options on the 2025 poll.

Through the end of May I’ll be covering DC entire publishing history by mapping missing omnibus volumes to fill in every gap in your DC oversize shelf! That’s all leading to the kickoff of the Tigereyes Most Wanted DC Omnibus 2nd Annual Poll on Near Mint Condition the first week of June.

In the past year DC has finally acknowledged that they have more WildStorm material to print beyond Jim Lee’s run on WildCATs, the first volume of The Authority, and Planetary. We got a second Authority omnibus, a WildCATs compendium that significantly expanded on the material in the Jim Lee Absolute Edition, and a Compendium of pre-Authority Stormwatch material!

That’s all great progress, but it still mostly collects material that has been collected before. There’s 30 potential omnibus volumes worth of WildStorm material that DC could still collect! While sales on the three recent books might be a good indicator of demand, it would be huge for a WildStorm book to make it into the on-air results of the Tigereyes poll this year.

Wildstorm Omnibus Mapping for the Tigereyes Most Wanted DC Omnibus 1st Annual Poll

May 10, 2024 by krisis

It’s time to dive into the WildStorm Universe – perhaps my favorite shared universe in all of comics! I’ll be loosely mapping missing and most-wanted DC omnibus volumes every day until May 19th! Then, on the 19th, I’ll be joining with Near Mint Condition to launch the first annual Tigereyes Most Wanted DC Omnibus Annual Poll! This post covers omnibuses missing from DC’s WildStorm imprint, including WildCATs, Stormwatch, Gen13, Deathblow, Wetworks, and more!

This post explains potential WildStorm Omnibus Mapping for votes on the Tigereyes Most Wanted DC Omnibus 1st Annual Secret Ballot. I’m posting all of these maps before the poll begins to give people the time to consider their favorites, correct our mapping mistakes, and catch books I might have missed.

There are three comic properties where I own every issue from their inception through 2012. One is X-Men, obviously. Another is Wonder Woman, covered earlier this week. The third is WildStorm. I own every floppy comic book ever published by WildStorm and I have them all packaged for binding – basically, I have this entire omnibus mapping already-collected in shortboxes in my garage!

I have to give a special shoutout to two amazing fellow WildStorm fans: WildStorm4Life, who runs the main WildStorm Universe group on Facebook, and Bryan Jose, who runs the Weathering WildStorm reading order blog. WildStorm4Life was instrumental in aiding my collecting every WildStorm issue by sharing his own binding maps with me over a decade ago!

If you don’t know DC well enough to know what to vote for, stick around for my explanations! Learn why the team behind the poll decided on these books and titles – including giving us feedback if we missed the mark.

If voting is now open, you can use this as your crib sheet! Or… just find some great comics to read!

Remember: These mappings are just my suggestion of how DC could assemble these books. They are meant to help you decide on your votes and build your personal reading list, but your vote on the poll is NOT an endorsement of my specific map. It’s a vote in favor of DC creating a book with that title or covering that period.

High-effort, heavily-researched, over-the-top comics posts like this one are made possible via the support of Patrons of Crushing Krisis. For less than the cost of a single comic issue a month you can fuel my in-depth comics coverage, plus gain access to dozens of exclusive collecting guides & reading orders – including all of the Crushing Comics Guide to DC Comics.

From The Beginning: WildStorm Universe – Deathblow #13-15

November 27, 2016 by krisis

[Patreon-Nov16-Post-Bug][/Patreon-Nov16-Post-Bug]It’s time to return to Deathblow without Tim Sale and after the epic tale of the Black Angel, and I had no idea what to expect.

What I do know is that Brandon Choi is now down to scripting just this and Gen13, and I miss the guy! Not only for his consistency, but for the way the entire WildStorm Universe gelled under his pen.

deathblow_013 As great as Choi was on the global intrigue of Stormwatch and the teen angst of Gen13, something about this pair of procedural tales makes me think his heart remains in these gun-for-hire stories. These three issues are by far the best of Deathblow yet, despite them having nothing to do with his mega-arc with the Black Angel.

Choi imports of a noirish the vampires and werewolves from Wetworks for a noirish tale in issues #13-14. It works perfectly to establish Michael Cray’s new status quo nine months after his battle with the Black Angel. Now he’s a gun for hire who can’t help but step into supernatural affairs.

The story is tense, bloody, and maybe the first true mystery tale we’ve seen from WildStorm. It also feels an issue or two longer than it actually is (in a good way) thanks to being packed with plenty of rising action and fine details.

Similarly, the Navy Seals one-shot that follows is a satisfying standalone story that fleshes out the mysterious Gamorra mission where Michael Cray met Mr. Waering. It also ties in some plot threads from as early as Deathblow #0, with the Seals-in-training on the base all gunning for Cray’s head due to the spectacular bloodbath of Costa Mesa. It’s a thrilling little mystery with no easy resolution that leaves us as confused as Cray.

On art, original Stormwatch inker Trevor Scott has made the leap to penciller and his work is perfect for Deathblow! He’s nowhere near Sale’s look – and more like Whilce Portacio than Jim Lee. As amazing as Sale’s approach was, there is something deeply satisfying about seeing Deathblow drawn in Image’s house style. There’s nary a bad page here, and some truly interesting panel work. Scott isn’t addicted to splash pages like most Image artists, and he delivers a lot of interesting framing, smaller sequential panels, and silhouetted bodies.

At the start we’re back to the sickly gray and green palette from colorist Ben Fernandez, which will give you whiplash if you’re coming directly from Linda Medley’s warm limited palette on the last arc. Fernandez warms things up when Cray touches down in LA. It’s such a relief to see some saturated reds that aren’t blood (although, there is still plenty of blood). Issue #15 has downright normal colors as we see Cray driving the I-5 by day.

The Choi/Scott synergy on this trio of issues is remarkable. These are two of the first totally throwaway, fill-in types of stories we’ve seen on any WildStorm book, yet they both are gripping reads that only serve to make what came before more interesting.

Want the recap? Keep reading for the full plots of this trio of awesome issues. Here’s the schedule for the rest of this month’s WildStorm re-read. We’re in the home stretch! Tomorrow brings us Union (1995) #1-3 & Gen13 (1995) #0-1 (in two separate posts), followed by Team 7: Objective: Hell (1995) #1-3 on Tuesday, and then we’ve reached the main event – WildStorm Rising!

Need the issues? These issues have never been collected. For single issues try eBay (#10-12) or Amazon (#13, 14, 15). [Read more…] about From The Beginning: WildStorm Universe – Deathblow #13-15

From The Beginning: WildStorm Universe – Backlash #6-7

November 26, 2016 by krisis

[Patreon-Nov16-Post-Bug][/Patreon-Nov16-Post-Bug]When we last saw our heroes this book was a chauvinist wreck being scripted by man-children. I wonder what will happen next!

backlash_v1_06 No matter what I say about the lumpy scripting on this book, it’s definitely in the upper half of good looking WildStorm ongoings as Stormwatch wobbles through multiple artists and Deathblow switches away from Tim Sale.

While Brett Booth is a large part of that, so is a set of DC-esque vibrant colors from Martin Jimenez. Together, they make what could be a spy book feel like a superhero adventure. That lends a lot of implied joy to the proceedings that the script isn’t bringing to the table. Even spitting the three chapters of issue #7 between Melvin Rubi, Booth, and Dan Norton doesn’t change that – each of them delivers, especially Rubi on the intro.

Plotwise, the trio of scripters continue to be hapless. Issue #6 neatly ties up the book’s raison d’être in a neat little bow, with the VR device leading Backlash right to S’Ryn and having him neatly resolve her broken psyche with the help of Voodoo. That story probably deserved more than just one issue.

I’m not sure what the point of the title will be after WildStorm Rising, but luckily that’s not my problem this month!

Then, issue #7 finds the quickest possible route to dispose of that new status quo, while pitting a still unsympathetic Taboo against a term of mercs who I was rooting for 100%.

(The letters columns in #7 include a cascade of praise for the one-note evil sexbot Taboo. I’d ask what book they were reading, but then I remembered some stuff about teenage boys and just shook my head.)

Also, there are some intractable continuity problems here – Backlash visits the WildCATs headquarters with a recovered Voodoo in Backlash #6, placing it after WildCATs #18. Then Backlash #7 begins with two weeks elapsing. The trouble is that WildCATs #19 happens just seconds after #18 and immediate moves into the start of WildStorm Rising, which puts Backlash #8 way into the crossover (but not really, since Backlash’s #8 is one of the chapters).

These issues needed some kind of reshuffling to extend the story in #7 – perhaps by inserting the disconnected Australian Outback in #8 to displace the big finalé with S’Ryn into #8, leaving Slayton and Diane’s sudden breakup to end this pair of books.

Want the recap? Keep reading for the details of this pair of issues. Here’s the schedule for the rest of this month’s WildStorm re-read. Tomorrow brings us a new arc sans Tim Sale on Deathblow #13-15, followed by the start of new Union and Gen13 ongoings on Monday.

Need the issues? You’ll need to purchase single issues – try eBay (#6-7) or Amazon (#6, 7). [Read more…] about From The Beginning: WildStorm Universe – Backlash #6-7

From The Beginning: WildStorm Universe – Wetworks #4-7

November 23, 2016 by krisis

[Patreon-Nov16-Post-Bug][/Patreon-Nov16-Post-Bug]The opening arc of Wetworks masqueraded as a modern Team 7 with a supernatural bent, but this run of issues locks in the vampire underworld drama as the central plot of the book.

wetworks_v1_04 It feels like the team takes a backseat in these issues, although they do finally get some character development off the battle field. While I’ve finally got all of their names straight (Dane, Grail, Claymore, Jester, Pilgrim, and Dozer back at base), it’s hard to care about any of them aside from the team’s advance scout, Pilgrim. Coincidentally (or not?), Pilgrim gets two of the biggest scenes in the run that generate more questions than answers.

There’s also a lot of focus on the mystery of Mother One – who, let’s not forget, murdered two of the team in #3 just to gather telemetry. That was meant to be a surprise, but here she’s dropped all pretenses of being anything other eeky cyborg lady who freely reads everyone’s minds and is only 20% human to begin with. The team quickly grows as suspicious of her as we are as readers.

If it was hard to trust Mother One as a reader, it’s impossible to root for either side of the vampire conflict. Drakken is definitely written as more “evil,” but we’re talking about vampires here – they’re all evil. By contrast, his cousin the queen seems bored by her entire existence, barely deigning to make a semi-century appearance in front of her subjects and bristling at her inability to join in the fray of battle. Would it be so bad to depose her?

We learn that Wetworks is less an interloper and more a third wheel in the internecine vampire wars, thanks to their creepy benefactor Waering being a werewolf himself. Or, at least, the letters columns told me that – I had to go back to #5 and squint pretty hard to figure he was the human identity of the werewolf we meet.

Whilce Portacio isn’t delivering the same A-Game we saw in the first few issues. As with all of the Image founders within their first years, not being reigned in by editorial brings out both his best and his worst tendencies. The other founders had moved past that phase at this point (and, in Jim Lee’s case, off of his book) while Portacio is still figuring things out.

His panels are overly busy and too dark. It results in a lot of muddled, making characters hard to recognize (on top of them all being identical and gold). Plus, some key actions are indecipherable, as with a pivotal scene with Claymore and Jester that I can’t make heads or tails of. He seems to really cut loose when the WildCATs are briefly on panel (or maybe that’s Joe Chiodo enjoying their brighter palette) in a way that we don’t see again in this run. Francis Takenaga scripts Portacio’s plot with way too many words and far too little clarity; these issues are his first comic credits.

This run gives us a lot of information about the timing of other titles. Lynch is out at IO and Santini is reporting directly to Craven in #4, which places this after Gen13. Then, WildCATs appear in #4-5 sometime around WildCATs #14 (it’s prior to Voodoo’s injury in WildCATs #15) except they’re missing Warblade – so maybe that is after #19? Anyhow, it gives Grifter and Dane their first meeting. That throws a bit of a wrench into Deathblow #9-12 (where Lynch is with IO and Grifter and Dane work together), except maybe none of that actually happened, so we’re not going to get too worried about it.

Want the full details? Keep reading for a deeper breakdown of the plot. Here’s the schedule for the rest of this month’s WildStorm re-read. tomorrow we’ll work on three WildCATs tie-ins: Warblade: Endangered Species (1995) #1-4, Grifter: One Shot (1995), and a WildStorm Rarities Maul story. Then, it’s back to Stormwatch (1993) #17-21 & Special 02!!!

Need the issues? You’ll need to purchase single issues – try eBay (#4-7) or Amazon (#4, 5, 6, 7). 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. [Read more…] about From The Beginning: WildStorm Universe – Wetworks #4-7