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Post by Dizzy D on Jun 3, 2018 2:48:26 GMT -5
The Wildstorm #11 by Warren Ellis (writer) and Jon Davis-Hunt (artist), Steve Buccellato (Colourist) and Simon Bowland (letterer).
The Cover: The CAT teleporting into an IO facility, including Grifter, Savant, John Colt and Adrianna.
Page 1-2: Jenny and the Doctor have been sleeping together. Jenny's bedsheets have the Wonder Woman logo on them. Jenny concludes that the Doctor and herself are anomalies that neither Skywatch nor I.O. know about and she knows about more of them. Her theory is that these anomalies are necessary to protect regular humanity once I.O. and Skywatch go to war.
Page 3-5: Zealot is tracking and bugging Mitchell Canon (the tracking program is called Ambush Bug, a reference to the DC character). Also Uber is called Overshare in this world, but that's less relevant. Mitch gives the rough outline of their attack on Skywatch, masking their attack with a fake attack of North Korean bugs invading Satellite Communications.
Page 6-7: Bendix explains to Lauren why the treaty exists: neither side can affort the mass destruction an outright war would cause, but more importantly, I.O.'s control over Earth is not complete and a lot of governments exist outside their influence, unaware of either I.O. and Skywatch. In case of war those groups will retaliate and they outnumber both Skywatch and I.O.
Page 8-14: A flashback as Bendix tells Lauren about Science City Zero in the 70s. Science City Zero were introduced in the old Wildstorm Universe in Plantary as a place where either the government or the forces behind the screens (The Four) were performing experiments on human subjects to create superhumans. This time it was a Soviet/I.O. cooperation. Skywatch uses their flying saucer type spaceships to attack the facility as it included spacelaunch facilities, breaking the treaty, but the facility was well-armed and more of a threat than expected. In the end the battle ends with one saucer surviving (with Bendix on it) and 35 I.O. personnel in Science City Zero surviving, among them John Lynch. Bendix tells Lauren that this attack was what caused John Lynch's eye to go blank. In the old universe, Lynch also lost an eye.
Page 15: Miles Craven gives Jackie King the go ahead to dataraid Skywatch.
Page 16-19: Angie has worked on her nanobots and is experimenting with the upgraded version. She changes again and this time her base form looks a lot more like the old universe Engineer. The changes also cause her far less pain and no bleeding.When she manifestsd the outer armour this time she does notice a lack of blood pressure (which always was an interesting part: if she uses her blood to manifest armour, what happens to the blood inside her body?)
Page 20: Kenesha and Cash are talking about their plans to attack I.O. During the conversation Cole gets a message.
Page 21-22: The message came from Zealot. It's obvious the two are still close like in the old universe (she warns him when he touches her, but she does smile at him later, so their relationship might have been romantic like it was in the old books). She warns him that IO knows he's alive and that they believe he's working for Skywatch now. She also taught Cole much about fighting like in the original universe. When she leaves she tells him to remind Marlowe (she does not like him) and give her regards to Kenesha. (unclear if they are still sisters, but the two of them obviously have a relationship).
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Post by Dizzy D on Jun 3, 2018 4:48:48 GMT -5
The Wildstorm #12 by Warren Ellis (writer) and Jon Davis-Hunt (artist), Steve Buccellato (Colourist) and Simon Bowland (letterer).
The Cover: Angie, suited up, standing in the rain.
Page 1: Jackie King is in the archives, looking for the file on Thunderbook. When she opens the file, she notices a device is set off, she presumes that John Lynch put it there.
Page 2-3: The wild CAT carries out their plan to attack IO's Hightower site. Adrianna teleports in and releases the bug Kenesha made. A false biohazard alert is triggered to evacuate the site before they enter and detonate the bomb.
Page 4-6: IO Analysis attacks Skywatch. Miles Craven is disappointed that there is not much fanfare to informational warfare, just many people typing on computers. Jackie tells Craven about the device in the Thunderbook file, it was an incendiary device but so old it was no longer functional.
Page 7-14: With Hightower presumably evacuated the CAT makes their move, but Adrianna notices that the teleport shielding inside is still up and the team runs into an armed group in biohazard suits. The CAT quickly dispatches them and find out that at the center of the site there are a lot of brains in jars connected to computers. Kenesha disables the shielding and hacks the database. The team briefly discusses if they can download the information, but Kenesha didn't bring the storage required. They decide to destroy the base instead. Grifter is still annoyed by Kenesha's obsession with explosions and the team bicker will they teleport out, leaving the bomb behind.
Page 15: Zealot calls Bendix, making him realize that the North Korean attack on the satellites is a ruse. He orders Zealot to kill an IO operative.
Page 16-18: Ivana Baiul notifies Craven of the situation at Hightower. Mitchell notices that there is data from Hightower coming their way, even though it's evacuated and that it's an attack. They have to wait till the Skywatch attack is done before they can shut down their system and prevent the attack from Hightower. Craven wants to use the data from the attack to find something to convince Bendix not to start an open war. Jackie thinks it's already too late.
Page 19-20: Mitch thinks he's taking an Overshare ride home, but the driver is Zealot. She drives into an alley and shoots Mitch. So Warren Ellis is now 2 for 2 for killing Mitch Saunders.
Page 21-22: We see this universe of John Lynch for the first time. He's living in a cabin and the dead wolf on his table, the snow and the hunting rifle makes me believe it's somewhere in Montana or so. He's looking mostly the same, except he's more grey hair and a mustache. it turns out that incendiary device was actually a warning system (the incendiary part may have been a ruse or a backup that failed). An alert was sent to John anyway and he decides to take a road trip.
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Post by Dizzy D on Jun 3, 2018 9:58:56 GMT -5
And we're up to date again. The last issue didn't have as many references, but this one more than makes up for that:
The Wildstorm #13 by Warren Ellis (writer) and Jon Davis-Hunt (artist), Steve Buccellato (Colourist) and Simon Bowland (letterer).
The Cover: A closeup of John Lynch.
Page 1-2: Mitchell's body is found and Craven orders three teams to attack Skywatch Ground Division in New York.
Page 3: Bendix meanwhile is planning to attack the IO Science Cities.
Page 4-5: John Lynch is having coffee and lunch at a diner in the middle of nowhere. I'm not 100% (don't have the relevant issues here), but it looks to be the same diner Elijah Snow was in in the first epiode of Planetary. A weird-looking guy is telling Lynch that "they" can feel him "Them from your basement" and "Us from Heaven's Box". Heaven's Box does not immediately ring any bells, but in Team 7 the failures of Craven's experiments to create superhumans were kept in the basement, but reached out telepathically to the other superhumans above.
Page 6-15: Lynch reaches his destination, a lone farm house. Inside he meets Colonel Marc Slayton. (More DC references: Slayton is watching "The Challengers of the Unknown", a movie produced by "Quinn Harleen". The Challengers of the Unknown are of course Kirby's classic DC team. Quinn Harleen is a reference to Harley Quinn, Joker's sometimes girlfriend and probably the most popular DC character created after 1990. Linking Harley Quinn with the Challengers is a bit odd to me, I don't think those have any history, but then again Quinn has been all over the place.)
Back to Wildstorm: Marc Slayton was another character I've been missing so far: known as Backlash, a Kheran like the WildC.A.T.s, but also a Gen-Active like Gen13. He was a member of Stormwatch and Team 7 and also one of the few Wildstorm characters that had a relatively longrunning solo-series (most Wildstorm titles were team titles). Ellis has done a bit of homework here; the surname Slayton has its roots in the old english for farm.
Confirmation that the device in the last issue should have incinerated the files as well as sent a warning, so it was just a misfire, not misdirection. We get some more information on what Project Thunderbook was: it involved inserting alien DNA into human test subjects. Thunderbook is a new version of Team7/Gen12 of the old Wildstorm Universe. This also neatly merges Backlash two different origins into one: instead of being injected with the gen-factor, he's injected with Kheran DNA. The Kheran DNA seems to be intelligent, instructing Slayton to act and bulding two tentacles in his forearms. These tentacles were energy whips for the old Slayton, but this version they seem to be more organic. This version of Slayton also is completely insane and murderous, while the previous one was usually a hero (with some darker actions from his past as a soldier). Lynch and Slayton fight briefly, but Lynch mostly just tries to escape.
During this whole seen the name "Amble" is very clearly written on several cans of beer. The way this series has worked so far that those type of things are DC references, but I know of no DC character or group named Amble. Anybody any idea?
Page 16: The Mayor is found and recruited by the Doctor and Jenny Sparks.
Page 17: Slayton is talking to an alien in the mirror. The alien, named Carer, tells Slayton to send more souls their way. This could be just Slayton being insane, but as we see at the end of this issue, the alien is a Kheran and there is no reason for Slayton to know what they would look like.
Page 18: Finally something gets confirmed I was waiting for: Priscilla Kitaen's visions are fed to her by the Daemonites. Also the sleeping pills on her nightstand are branded "Sleeper", the Wildstorm series by Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips.
Page 19-20Skywatch launches a spacecraft towards Mars. It will take a week to get there, which Bendix finds very primitive, but Lauren points out that regular humanity would still need about 9 months to send anything to Mars. Lauren has some far more extreme ideas than her previous counterpart: she has investigated Bendix order to kill some IO personnel, but also created a scenario where they just radically destabilize life on Earth on the whole.
Page 21-22: John Colt is standing naked in front of a mirror, recording a message to Marlowe. He notes that he does this every year and this is his (arbitrarily chosen) birthday. John thanks Emp for destroying their spacecraft and stranding them on Earth, because Colt's life on Earth has been far better than it would have been on Khera. Apparently this is not something Marlowe likes to be reminded off.
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Post by Dizzy D on Jun 23, 2018 4:24:38 GMT -5
Last month I was making a mental list about which properties we were missing from the revival. We were missing some individual Stormwatch members (Midnighter, Apollo, Winter etc. that I am still expecting to turn up) and I'm not expecting the smaller properties like Sleeper, Planetary, Automatic Kafka etc. to show up except in maybe some cameo. But Gen13/DV8 was the main property I was missing so far (Wetworks is also missing, but nobody cares about Wetworks. Not even Whilce Portacio cares about Wetworks). Cue the cover of issue #14:
The Wildstorm #14 by Warren Ellis (writer) and Jon Davis-Hunt (artist), Steve Buccellato (Colourist) and Simon Bowland (letterer).
The Cover: Fairchild, carrying a truck one-handed. An analysis reticule is on her (why does it have French lilies?) and informs us that the trucks weighs 5000 lbs and calculates Fairchild's strength and energy use while she walks forward.
Page 1-6: Zealot reports in when Skywatch is attacked by IO CATS. She manages to save some personnel and during the fight we see some of her superhuman abilities (she notices a shot fired and is fast enough to move somebody out of the way while the bullet is in flight. She also flips over and throws a desk one-handed with enough force to knock over 2 men. She contacts Skywatch that IO has breached their facility and wants a connection with Bendix. During this scene it's actually unclear how the IO teams entered the facility at all: they didn't come in through the front entrance that Zealot used and security at the entrance didn't notice the attack, but we also don't see them bursting in through windows.
Page 7-16: Lynch arrives at a remote gas station to meet another member of Thunderbook, Alexandra Fairchild. From the cover I expected her to be Caitlin Fairchild, but this makes more sense. Alex Fairchild in the original Wildstorm universe was male and had psychic powers like all of Team 7. Here, the Thunderbook (Thunderbook is basically Team 7: we have confirmation in the last few issues that Fairchild, Slayton, Lynch and Cole were all involved and they are also some of the main Team 7 member in the original Wildstorm Universe). Fairchild himself was never that important as a character, but his daughters Caitlin Fairchild and Roxy Spaulding were two of the main members of long-running Wildstorm title Gen13. Alexandra looks a lot like Caitlin (tall, muscular female with long red hair and green eyes) and has the same powers (superhuman strength and durability.), so Thunderbook seems to give each subject unique powers.
Lynch is more cautious this time (keeping a gun ready at his back, but she seems to be far more rational than Slayton was last issue.
One of Fairchild's mugs during the conversation says "A Local Shop for Local People". Doesn't seem to be a Wildstorm reference to me, but a League of Gentlemen reference (BBC comedy/horror parody), but why an American woman in the middle of nowhere has a mug for that series? The reference does kinda work with Fairchild trying to keep herself isolated from outsiders and she describes the nearby town as people keeping to themselves. The other mug is a DC reference "Challengers of the Unknown", which is a TV-series in this universe as we saw last issue.
Alex informs John that she has a daughter, Caitlin (no mention of Roxy here and with Alex being female the chance of Caitlin and Roxy being half-sisters is rather unlikely in this universe.), which she gave up for adoption; she was afraid of what she could do to the child with her own superhuman strength in a careless moment. Alex has superhuman strength, but the implant that gives her her powers also makes her agressive. During this talk she bends the wrench in her hand without even noticing it. She tells John that she has started a war with a local crime family that have been terrorizing the town and she leaves, carrying a truck which she has rigged with explosives. While she prepares to leave, she knows that John is going to find her daughter and asks him to be kind to her. In the original Wildstorm Universe, John Lynch first and most of his appearances were in Gen13, where he gathers and protects the children of Team7 members who have inherited their father's genetic alteration and are superpowered. This story might go the same way.
John drives off, but stops to look back. We only see an explosion and no idea whether Alex survived.
Page 17: Bendix and Craven talk through video to each other. Both sides accusing each other of crimes, neither realizing that some of these actions were done by a third group.
Page 18-19: The Mayor is talking to Jenny and the Doctor. He feels ill and tells them that he needs the pollution of a city to survive (which is the way Jack Hawksmoor. Jenny thinks he is just crazy, but the Doctor believes him and that she gives him a pill to cure him. He confirms to be Jack Hawksmoor (don't think we got his name before).
Page 20-22 Marc Slayton is hitchiking. A car stops in front of him, but Marc immediately asks the driver if he's IO or Skywatch. The driver pretends innocence, but Marc can feel that he's an altered human. The driver changes and confirms that he is Skywatch (he turns into a rocky creature with red eyes. Looking a bit like Darkseid). We don't see his powers though as Marc immediately attacks with his tentacles, singing a song while he removes the spine of the driver.
I didn't recognize the driver as a pre-existing character. Maybe he was Jacob Greene, the Thing-analogue in Planetary, but it was a throwaway character so I guess it's just somebody Ellis and Hunt made up for this scene.
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Post by Dizzy D on Jul 22, 2018 4:37:27 GMT -5
Another month, another issue and a few callbacks this time as well. The Wildstorm #15 by Warren Ellis (writer) and Jon Davis-Hunt (artist), Steve Buccellato and John Kalisz (Colourists) and Simon Bowland (letterer). The Cover: Marc Slayton opening his mouth with a Kheran alien with tentacles coming out of it. None of this happens in the comic, so it's more symbolic of Slayton being controlled by the alien genes implanted in him. Page 1: Bendix wants revenge on Craven, due to their surveillance Skywatch now know where I.O.s Hightower facility is, so Bendix wants to drop a "Little Stick" on it as a warning. (The Little Stick is a simple diamond rod, about a foot long, that is dropped from orbit and builds up energy as it drops, hitting with the force of a nuke without the radiation.) Bendix tells Lauren to talk to Sideways Bob. Sideways Bob is one of Ellis' creations for the series DV8, a sort of janitor/mercenary for I.O., who is insane, but loyal. In the old universe, Bob had a mannequin head he talked to, according to Lauren, he put lipstick on an empty spacesuit in the version. We don't get to see him, but he seems to be pretty much the same person, only Skywatch attached instead of I.O. Page 2-5: Jack Hawksmoor has a flashback on the operations that turned him into a superhuman, the Doctor sees his memories. Her pill did work to clean up Jack's mind and he is far more lucid. He tells Jenny and Shen that he is the result of Skywatch experiments to create human slaves who can survive on Earth after it has been turned into a wasteland of ruins and that he's not the only one. In the original Jack was transformed by aliens (though a mini-series later claimed that he was changed by humans from the far future in preparation for an event). Page 6-7: A Little Stick is dropped on Hightower. Aiming such a weapon would be nearly impossible, I think, but we can chalk that up to Skywatch crazy tech. Page 8-9: Slayton talks to the alien he sees in the mirror. We know get why Slayton calls the alien "Carer", it's actually "Khera". Slayton has killed several people at a gas station. Last issue he seemed to be targetting enhanced humans and half-aliens, but here he seems to have been killing indiscriminately. Page 10-18: Another town, another bar/diner John Lynch walks into. This time he is looking for Andrew Kwok. The man at the table tells him that he's Philip Chang, but Lynch knows that it's Kwok. Kwok is another Thunderbook agent, but he has created the fake identity of Chang for himself outside of Lynch's knowledge, fearing that Lynch might be compromised one day. Philip tells John that he has 2 kids, Hector and Percival. John can feel Chang trying to dig inside his mind and Chang admits that he's trying to kill Lynch, but he notices something weird inside Lynch's head. John shoots Chang, but Chang stops the bullet in mid-air and smirks. John then shoots multiple bullets at him, noting that Chang has always had trouble focusing on more than 1 thing at a time. One of the barman walks up to them to see what's going on and Lynch shoots him, then the other customer. Lynch returns to Chang who is still trying to stop the bullets with his telekinesis, but it's taking all of his power. Lynch wants to know what happened to the subjects of Thunderbook; they were loyal soldiers and now they all just want to murder and reproduce. Chang reveals that the alien material inside them has changed them and it wants to reproduce. Lynch promises to take care of his children and then kills Chang and blows up the bar. A lot of things to unpack here: - Philip Chang was another of the Team 7 members in the original Wildstorm Universe and an interesting case back there: outside of the original mini-series, he himself never appeared again, though all the other members did (even some pretty obscure ones). The Andrew Kwok identity is new to this version. Chang was the tech-guy of Team 7, but his importance to the old Wildstorm universe, was mostly as father of one of the Gen13 kids. Poor Philip/Andrew also didn't even get a cover appearance like the other Thunderbook members appearing so far. - The powers Chang/Kwok displays here (telekinesis and telepathy) were the main powers all the Team 7 members had in the orignal universe. In this universe they seem more random. - Chang tells Lynch that he has two kids: Hector and Percival. In the original version Edward Percival Chang, nicknamed Grunge, was one of the main members of Gen13. He had powers similar to the Absorbing Man, it remains to be seen what his powers are in this version. He appearantly had a brother named Absolom according to the internet, though I always thought that Eddie was a single kid (though I can't remember Absolom and Eddie being brothers, probably a minor detail I had forgotten. I just rechecked the 1 issue of Gen13 Absolom appears in, and it says nothing about his relationship with Eddie... probably because it's a single page). Maybe the relationship was revealed in the Wildstorm revival issue that was published recently but I never got around to buying. - The name Hector does ring a bell: Hector Morales, the DV8 member named Powerhaus, but I doubt it's him, because Hector Morales is already appearing in Michael Cray's solo-title. I assume Hector Chang will be Absolom as mentioned above (though why Ellis didn't go for another Knights of the Round table name like Percival, after having Philip say that his wife is obsessed with the Knights and wanted to name their kids after them is a mystery to me.
Edit: Penny Arcade forums' member Fencingsax pointed out to to me that Sir Hector (or Sir Ector) is Arthur's foster father and one of his first knights. So it does make sense.
- I think this is the first hint we get that John Lynch himself is not a regular human either. Chang/Kwok notices that there is something weird with Lynch's brain. Back to the issue itself: Page 19: Bendix shows Craven the crater his Little Stick left and warns him that he will do worse if Craven ever threatens them again. Craven is not impressed: he tells Bendix that Skywatch can have the office back, but Lucy Blaze is banned from New York, if they ever see her, they'll kill her on sight. Page 20/21: Jackie tells Craven that they managed to find the location of Skywatch as a side-effect of the recent electronic warfare against it. She tells Craven to make them pay for the murder of Mitch. Page 22: Lauren informs Lucy that she is banned from New York, but that it's not punishment. Her duties are now to roam the US. Lucy feels that they are giving in to I.O., but Lauren tells her that New York is not a safe place to be in the future: Bendix still has a lot of Little Sticks... and some big ones. |
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Post by Deleted on Jul 22, 2018 23:48:26 GMT -5
Dizzy DThis is from Warren Ellis in his weekly newsletter about his approach to making this Wildstorm revival and I thought you and anyone reading your wonderful annotations might find it interesting... -M
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Post by Dizzy D on Aug 18, 2018 13:05:28 GMT -5
I haven't been doing much with Michael Cray in this thread, because most of it hasn't really tied into the greater Wildstorm Universe (and it hasn't been very good so far), but the latest issue (Michael Cray #10), does have one important development: Michael goes into his head and talks to the source of his powers. Those manifest in front of him and take the shape of a Kheran alien.
So is Cray another Project Thunderbook subject? I'll have to reread the series but from talks with other characters, I got the impression that Cray joined IO after Lynch already left. Craven doesn't seem to know anything about Thunderbook, Lynch kept all that information close to himself and neither Cray nor Craven seemed to know that Marlowe was not human. So did he get infected when at Halo? There are multiple Kherans walking around there, but Marlowe seemed as suprised at Cray's powers as Cray himself was (and wouldn't Halo be able to detect Kheran DNA better than any type of alien DNA?) A lot of questions which hopefully will be answered next issue.
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Post by Dizzy D on Aug 18, 2018 14:05:03 GMT -5
A relatively straightforward issue for a change with only 3 scenes, but a few important events are happening: The Wildstorm #16 by Warren Ellis (writer) and Jon Davis-Hunt (artist), Steve Buccellato (Colourists) and Simon Bowland (letterer). The Cover: John Lynch, gun drawn is in a dark room, he looks up in surprise or fear, above him, hidden in shadows is Gloria Spaulding, standing upside down on the ceiling. Newton's Law of Universal Gravitation is displayed as well as the comment "Gravitational Field Negation", her power. Page 1-8: Angela has incorporated the Hightower system which was described as "machine telepathy", her control over her suit has increased and she can see the computations working. She has access to internet and wonders what it looks like and we get a page I love: a drawing of the world wide web through Angela's new senses. Angela's actions don't go unnoticed though: Jenny Sparks, also connected to "the system" senses her mind. Jenny and Angela talk, Angela keeps the conversation hidden in case Jacob is monitoring her. Jenny tells her that she doesn't trust I.O. and Skywatch and she wants to do something about it. She offers Angela a place on her team, she just has to call whenever she needs help. So, Jenny was the leader of the Authority in the old Wildstorm Universe. A team not bound to any of the governments of the world that acted as they saw fit. The Authority was Jenny, the Engineer (Angela Spica), Jack Hawksmoor, Swift (Shen Li-Min), the Doctor (Jeroen Thornedike) and Midnighter & Apollo. Swift and the Doctor are the same person in this version, so all Jenny is missing right now are Midnighter&Apollo, both of whom haven't appeared yet (but have appeared in current DC comics, so they might be off-limits for Ellis. An early interview said that they would be available in both universes, but waiting to see). Page 9-20: Lynch arrives at a home in the middle of nowhere, the area is abandoned and rocky. The house has a weird, hexagonal pillar sticking out of it, but looks pretty nice. Lynch draws his gun and goes inside. The building is dark and empty, but Gloria Spaulding, hanging upside down in the air inside the pillar, surprises Lynch. She tells him that the cameras she has, already detected him and advises him to put away his gun. John warns her like he has the others. Gloria is at least more friendly than Chang and Slayton. During their conversation, Gloria confirms that she has a child (driven by compulsion like the other Thunderbook subjects), but that she left it with her mother. Gloria steals things and she tells Lynch that she has a whole network of "interesting friends". Lynch asks if her implant ever talked to her and Gloria replied that it used to sing (implying that it no longer does so), the song took away her anxiety, but also her cares, leaving her like she is now. She asked about the other Thunderbook subjects, referring to them as the Thunderbook 12th Genetic Stage. Gloria informs Lynch that she knows about Slayton, his killings and that his implant "remembers where it came from". She tells Lynch to leave as the house around him start to fall apart, Lynch makes it outside and Gloria is flying up in the air, the pieces of her house following her up into the sky. In the original universe, Gloria never was a member of Team 7 (Team 7 didn't even have any female members apart from Christie Blaze (who may have been Zealot's daughter, but I don't think that was ever confirmed. Still Lucy Blaze/Christy Blaze? Both members of Team1/Team7? Quite a coincidence if not related.), who almost became a member but was blocked by Craven (70s/80s sexism at work). Christie later did become a member though when the team reunited. Anyway, back to Gloria. Gloria Spaulding was the daughter of a general and while on base, she had an affair with Team 7 member Alex Fairchild. Alex was married though and left her. 9 months later, Gloria gave birth to a daughter, Roxy. Roxy Spaulding became a member of Gen13, together with her half-sister Caitlin Fairchild. With Alex Fairchild being female in this version, that obviously is not going to happen (though... alien DNA, supertech... comics.. you never know.) Roxy had the power to control gravity, much like Gloria is displaying in this version. For that matter only Philip Chang has been displaying different powers from his Gen13 kid in the original universe. Thunderbook's full name "Thunderbook 12th Genetic Stage" obviously is a reference to Gen12, the original name for the experiment Team7 went through and their children became Gen13. (Out of universe, the title was supposed to be called GenX, but Marvel came out with Generation X at the same time, so it became Gen13, referring to Generation X being the 13th generation of Americans. Setting the new series in the present, that is not going to work as we're 2 generations further by now.) So Thunderbook as we have met them so far: Slayton and Chang are killers. Slayton obviously is insane, influenced by his implant. Chang was an assassin before Thunderbook, so the implanet may not be the cause of his murderous behaviour. Alexandra had violent moods, but realised this and kept herself isolated so she didn't hurt innocents. Gloria has no conscience, but she seems no longer under the influence of the implant, though she admits that she has killed before. Leaving Cole Cash (of the people we have met) and Cole... seems pretty normal, really. He is a killer, but only kills people when in combat. Outside combat he acts as a normal human being, is social and has shown to care about people. Maybe we'll get to see more of the side-effects Thunderbook had on him, or maybe the actual Kherans (Zealot in particular) counteracted the side-effects of the implants. In the original universe, Cash was going insane from his power, losing control of them till he met Zealot, who taught him how to lock his powers up, restoring his sanity. Something similar may have happened here. edit: Another thing I wanted to talk about: Cash doesn't seem to have the drive to procreate like the other members. In the original universe, Cash was (AFAIK) the only Team 7 member (at least of those who survived the experiment obviously) who didn't have any kids: Lynch had a son (Robert of Gen13), Cray had a daughter (Rachel of DV8), Alex as said had two daugters, Stephen Callahan had 3 kids (Nicole and Matthew with his wife, Sarah Rainmaker outside his marriage), Chang had two sons (I only know Grunge of Gen13, but as said before the internet keeps telling me Absolom, a character I can't even remember, is also his child) and Slayton had twins (Aries and Jodi). There was a difference though between Cash and the other members: Cash was significantly younger than the rest of Team7, forced to join the army as a teenager to avoid jail and his romantic partner through most of his adulthood was Zealot (though Kherans and humans could procreate in the original universe: the basis the whole Wildcats team was based upon.)
Page 21-22: Angela asks Cole to teach her about guns. Cole explains how bullets work to her and Angela creates a bullet from her hand. Cole is impressed, he didn't know she could that. Angela admits that she couldn't until two days ago. She then asks him to take a gun apart so that she can scan it, forming a gun in her hand. |
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Post by Dizzy D on Dec 18, 2018 7:34:13 GMT -5
Just as a note: people wondering why I haven't done the last 2 issues. My comicbook store never received copies. (Probably a messup by Diamond, happens too often for overseas customers in my experience.) The person doing the American comics at my store is trying desperately to get me my copies (I don't blame him for this at all).
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Post by Dizzy D on Jan 29, 2019 16:57:15 GMT -5
Late I know, but I finally got it:
The Wildstorm #17 by Warren Ellis (writer) and Jon Davis-Hunt (artist), Brian Buccellato (Colourist) and Simon Bowland (letterer).
The Cover: Stephen Rainmaker, a tiny figure hanging in the sky surrounded by a massive storm. The tactical overview gives the windspeed at 70m/s, which would put it in a category 5 hurricane. (I love this cover by the way, usually when Storm or so is drawn controlling a storm, you see them as a large figure surrounded by a few winds, this shows just how massive such a storm would be.)
Page 1-4: Stephen Rainmaker is 'hiding' in the Akokisa reservation.
The Akokisa is an interesting choice, Sarah Rainmaker in the original comics is of Apache descend and the Akokisa as a tribe really no longer exists, probably absorbed into a other tribes. In the comics, Sarah Rainmaker is the daughter of Stephen Callahan, a Team 7 member of Irish descent (who is also the father of Gen13 villains and DV8 members Treshold (Matthew) and Bliss (Nicole).) I never really liked the relationship: Sarah and Stephen never met in the comics and it always felt that Chuck Dixon forgot to include a Native American member and then just made Sarah the daughter of a random member's one-night stand. I don't think Matthew, Nicole or Sarah ever found out they were related either. Stephen here is the last member of Thunderbook, so probably no Matthew and Nicole in this world.
Page 5-11: Stephen and John talk about Thunderbook and the members. Stephen was always the most dangerous according to John, but he has come at peace with himself by no longer fighting with the things inside him. Kinda weird that Stephen describes Andy Chang as sweet and reasonable, while he was an assassin even before Thunderbook. During the conversation, Stephen refers to a doctor at Thunderbook named Ragnar Helspont. In the original comics Helspont was one of the Daemonite Lords trapped on Earth, but from this description and the Daemons we've seen so far, it's unlikely that Ragnar Helspont is a Daemonite.
Stephen confirms that he has a daughter named Sarah and from his description it sounds like she is basically the same as the original Sarah.
Page 12-19 Angie is using the Halo Voice Assistant (basically a Halo version of Amazon's Alexa/Echo) to spy on Kenesha and Emp, who discuss a drawing in a news article about Voodoo. Voodoo describes a creature that is giving her song ideas at night and Emp recognises the being as a Daemon, their ancient enemy. At this point an actual Daemon appears to Angie and shows her images (we see the Bleed and the mechanical heart that the Doctor saw earlier).
As I suspected from earlier issues, the Daemonites in this version of Wildstorm are not evil and the Daemon describes the war between Kheran and Daemonite as mostly a misunderstanding. The Daemonites want to limit the influence of the Kherans, an outside influence on Earth to keep the world balanced.
Page 20-22: Slayton arrives at an abandoned house and can "smell" an alien/metahuman/superhuman inside. We don't see the house inhabitants, but a voice warns him to leave "You lost this fight before you even stepped out." and a golden light appears out of the dark house and burns the top of Slayton's right ear. We then see two figures standing in shadow, one with glowing golden eyes and a halo around his head.
The "you lost this fight before..." is basically the Midnighter's catch phrase and the golden light around the other's head and his "heat-vision" is the same that Apollo had in the original Wildstorm, so there is little doubt that these two are indeed Midnighter and Apollo (cover of a new issue confirms that it's indeed Midnighter and Apollo). For those who don't know them, Apollo and Midnighter are Wildstorm's versions of Superman and Batman, and probably the first married gay superhero couple in comics? (Not sure about the last one)
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Post by Deleted on Apr 30, 2019 14:19:41 GMT -5
For anyone following the Wildstorm revival, Warren Ellis posted this on his blog this morning...
-M
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Post by Deleted on May 16, 2019 14:38:42 GMT -5
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Post by Reptisaurus! on May 16, 2019 15:42:29 GMT -5
Wow, Warren Ellis wrote something for 17 issues in a row! I keep hoping this shows up at the library but so far no dice.  |
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Post by Reptisaurus! on May 18, 2019 2:38:55 GMT -5
Ok, found the first two trades. I actually had flipped through this before, I just decided it looked boring in a lots-of-talking-heads way.
Ellis is rebooting sort-of the same characters in sort-of the same universe as his old Wildstorm work. But it feels completely different. There's very little of the over-the-top widescreen action movie visuals, and there is a lot (A LOT!) of plot.
It's essentially a spy comic about 3 different factions and several un-affiliated characters. There are no "lead" characters.. I don't think I've ever seem anyone utilize quite this approach to a nominally superhero book.
It definitely needs annotations!
Stories that just go on for issue after issue after issue aren't really my jam, I guess. This feels like one of those damn Jonathan Hickman HERE IS PART 3,422 of a 7,566 PART SERIES! #$%^ YOU IF YOU DIDN'T START AT THE BEGINNING things.
I'm looking forward to WildCATS, though. I like the paranoiac feel of the WildSTORM, but it's definitely something that would go down smoother in smaller doses.
Edit: Stuff I liked:
The Shen/Doctor mash-up! So great, way better than the original characters!
The first few scenes with the Engineer. And I like the more DIY designs a lot.
Bendix as comic relief.
The silent samurai fight scene.
FINALLY seeing Jack Hawksmoor.
This might end up being pretty damn good next volume now that all the set-up is out of the way.
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Post by Dizzy D on Jun 3, 2019 11:50:06 GMT -5
Probably the longest draft in the history of this board. I had most of this post saved in my browser for months before finally getting around to picking this up again. Issue 18 felt like the issue to set up all future plotlines and spin-offs. A lot of characters only get 1 page, but it sets up their current direction.
The Wildstorm #18 by Warren Ellis (writer) and Jon Davis-Hunt (artist), Steve Buccellato (Colourist) and Simon Bowland (letterer).
The Cover: For a change I got the variant cover by Daniel Warren Johnson and Michael Spicer, but the subject is still the same: John Lynch and Marc Slayton fighting. In the Jon Davis-Hunt version Lynch is entangled in Slayton's whips/tentacles. In this version Slayton is on the roof of Lynch's pickup truck hitting the truck with his whip, while John shoots through the roof. (Art does have a small mistake in it, Slayton is holding the handle of the whip instead of the whip growing from his arm).
Page 1-2: Jackie King confronts Miles Craven with her findings: there is a third party working against both Skywatch and I.O. Craven does not care, he wants Skywatch gone and Jackie tells Craven straight to his face that she is not impressed at all with his leadership.
Page 3-5: On Skywatch, Bendix meets up with Dr. Helspont, Skywatch's Chief Scientist. Helspont is old and irreverent, knowing his genius is too important for Bendix to do anything about his insolence.
We get confirmation that Michael Cray's powers have the same source as those of project Thunderbook; Helspont used to work for I.O. on Thunderbook. Also the reason of so many superpowered individuals running around unchecked on Earth: Skywatch has been experimenting on them, but Bendix is smart enough not to keep powerful beings on a space station where they could kill everybody with a simple attack. Down on Earth they are no threat and somebody else's problem. There have been 3 different versions of control that Skywatch has been using on their subjects. Only the last version, developed by Helspont is flawless. Earlier versions cause damage to the subject or only allow limited commands.
Helspont is very different from the original version: in the original Wildstorm, Helspont is a Daemonite Warlord, archenemy of Majestros. Here he is a human (as far as we can tell) scientist working for I.O. and Skywatch.
Page 6-7 Jack Hawksmoor is getting dressed, Shen tells Jenny that there was something in his brain that was causing his mental problems (presumably Skywatch's mind-control version 1). Jenny doubts Jack's abilities in the field, but Jack is eager to join the fight against the people who abused him.
Page 8-14: Little text here: John Lynch is driving around on an abandoned mountain road and finds his way blocked by Slayton. Slayton tries to kill him, but Lynch has come prepared and his skills and weapons are enough to gain the advantage. Lynch doesn't finish Slayton off though and tells him to go to New York and deal with I.O., the real threat to him. The Kheran inside Slayton's head agrees with Lynch. Lynch leaves after telling Slayton to kill Miles Craven.
Page 15-17: Angie leaves Marlowe's safe house through one of Shen's magic doors, leaving a note to thank the Wild C.A.T. Angie is introduced to Jack and Jenny also enters. Angie shows them the image of the Daemonite that told her to seek them out. He calls them "the authority".
A nod that does not need any explaining, but I;'ll do it anyway. The team Jenny is gathering is this universe's version of the Authority, the off-shoot of Stormwatch in the original Wildstorm Universe.
Page 18: Michael Cray is returning to New York (and displays more personality and charm in 1 page than in his whole solo-series combined). The Kheran inside his head (the manifestation of his powers is visible in the window of the train.
Page 19: Marlowe reads Angie's farewell later, but comforts Adrianna that she loves her. They have no time to look for her, Kanesha has found an IO research project that is an immediate threat and Adrianna teleports the C.A.T.
Page 20: Two drunk Daemonites are sitting in a bar... the Daemonite that appeared to Angie is complaining how bad and stilted his English was when he talked to Angie. They both agree that French is the better language by far. Zannah walks past them, but one of the Daemonites is shielding them to be invisible. We get a bit of backstory: Emp scuttled the Kheran spaceship deliberately to prevent Earth from turning into a Kheran slave camp. Zannah disagrees with him and takes off on her own. So the Daemonites now have to balance I.O., Skywatch and two different factions of Kheran just to give the planet a chance.
The most interesting part here: The Daemonites, now hidden from everybody else and among their own, look exactly like Kherans do, which opens up a lot of questions. From the way they refer to Kherans, they don't see themselves as Kherans. Are they another clade? An earlier offshoot?
Zannah being the loyalist while Emp being concerned with other species as well, fit with their relationship in the original WildC.A.T.s (Zannah improved a lot over the years though).
Page 21-22: Bendix meets up with Lauren and plans for the future. Bendix considers abducting people so that Helspont can turn them into a new army for them. Bendix sings that he's happy, while looking out the window of the space-station at Earth, contemplating the imminent destruction of I.O.
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