Stormwatch: Force of Nature - Part 1

[history79]

13 pages of 39

Comments

[thanekos]

Oh hey, it's that guy who committed suicide with a energy-construct gun he made himself.

.. his history's kinda hilariously meta.

[q99]

Which one?

[beyondthefringe]

Union.
He killed himself and then came back for Doselle Young's Monarchy series, which was a short-lived spinoff of The Authority starring Jackson King and Christine Trelaine, among others.

But that series was apparently retconned away and no one ever talks about it. :)

[halloweenjack]

The Monarchy, The Establishment, and Micah Wright's Stormwatch reboot were all these sort of post-Authority titles that both spun off that title's success and tried to critique it at the same time. I mostly remember the Monarchy as being a series that seemed overly infatuated with its own ideas, although the actual end product never seemed like much of a much. (The only remotely clever thing that I remember from it was a bit about capturing Hitler's ghost for some aliens to use as a sort of ectoplasmic condom.)

[icon_uk]

a bit about capturing Hitler's ghost for some aliens to use as a sort of ectoplasmic condom.

A sentence I can honestly say I never expected to read, even on scans_daily!

[q99]

Jackson King and Christine Trelaine are two great characters who just kinda faded away after Stormwatch.


You know, this also reminds me Wildstorm was a very super-populated setting. From this era of the Authority, you might get the impression that there was the Authority, and a lot of manufactured evil supers, but little in the way of other good hitters who'd go up against heavy stuff.

[silicondream]

Well, by the time the Authority came into existence, Ellis had set things up so that that impression would be correct. Stormwatch was defunct, most of its personnel were dead or crippled in the xenomorph incursion, and the WildC.A.T.S. were, like, three people. I think Spartan was busy doing Halo corporation stuff and Mr. Majestic was sulking by himself somewhere, so there really wasn't any team besides the Authority that was qualified to take on planetary-level threats.

Of course most of the supers were back again in a few years. Which contributed to the feeling that the Authority weren't actually Earth's only hope, they just acted like they were.

[q99]

There was Gen13 around too, who'd even visit the Authority too.

[silicondream]

Yup. But that was in the Millar era, where the Authority suddenly went from a dedicated, functional superteam operating on a scale nobody else could match, to weird autocratic celebrities who threw giant drunken parties for the other superheroes in between overthrowing national governments for kicks. It didn't really fit the book's previous continuity, although perhaps it fit Wildstorm's overall continuity better than the Ellis run had.

[beyondthefringe]

This is where I really came on board with Stormwatch, and became aware of Warren Ellis as a writer. Sure, he'd done stuff I'd read before this, like Excalibur, I believe, but this was the title which kicked down the doors of my attention. And it was just such a drastic way to overhaul a "typical" Image title that it kept me interested. Little did I realize what we were in for, or how long some of his influence would last on Wildstorm.

[q99]

Yes, this is when a lot of stuff began.

[mrstatham]

This. You'd had Moore and Casey's Wildcats prior to this - although Casey's 3.0 run during the Authority's run is more noteworthy than his volume 2 run - but those were very much playing in that early Image sandbox.

[q99]

They kinda helped set the stage for this :)

[mrstatham]

True, but I don't think either of them changed things as much or as drastically. Moore, for instance, was still very much shackled to the pointless crossovers foisted on him.

[halloweenjack]

I like the idea behind splitting up the team into separate units according to function; the X-Men have done similar things in the past, although I don't know who came first with that.

[icon_uk]

The Legion of Super-Heroes had their secret "Espionage Squad" subteam a far back as 1967, made up of member's best suited to covert ops; Phantom Girl, Chameleon Boy and Invisible Kid were the original Squad, and later iterations included Shrinking Violet, Triplicate Girl/Duo Damsel and Timber Wolf. (Possibly others too)

Larger teams like the Legion of the JLA usually split into smaller teams according to mission, but not like this I agree,

[reveen]

Uh, yeah. Lobot here doesn't set off any alarm bells or anything...

[katefan]

I broke this series out of the box to re-read it a few years ago. I had forgotten how lackluster the art was.

[mrstatham]

Raney definitely got better later on, although I very much respected his dedication to Rose Tattoo's stupidly intricate artwork, and - where I believe he did the work - his efforts replicating specific artstyles for Jenny Sparks' spotlight issue.

[icon_uk]

The Watchmen pastiche was instantly recognisable as such, even if the story was a singularly unpleasant one.