Copyright © 2012 Raising Jack. All Rights Reserved. Snowblind by Themes by bavotasan.com. Powered by WordPress.
Posts Tagged ‘ Wildstorm ’
...of the week
Art
Avengers
Batgirl
Batman
Battlestar Galactica
blogging
Buffy
Captain America
Casting
Countdown
Dark Horse
DC
Fantastic Four
Green Lantern
Heroes
Hulk
IDW
Image
Iron Man
JLA
Lois Lane
Lost
Marvel
Movies-Archived
New York Comic Con
Pull list
Robin
Secret Invasion
Solicits
Spider-Man
Star Trek
Star Wars
store
Supergirl
Superman
Thor
Trailers
TV-Archived
Uncategorized
Veronica Mars
Wolverine
Wonder Woman
X-Men
Zuda
…as previewed over at The Bleed. Huh, I didn’t even know Wildstorm had a blog.
Anyway.
It’s funny, but this page -
- where Drummer talks about theoretical implications of time travel, sounds like it’s straight out of Robert Sawyer’s excellent FlashForward which I just finished reading a couple of days ago (it’s also being adapted into a TV series from ABC which starts in a few weeks).
Wonder if Warren Ellis is a fan?
Continue Reading »The recent announcement of the return of DV8 got me all nostalgic about the original series which, unfortunately, is on the other side of the Atlantic from me right now.
So instead I decided to run all the covers from the original DV8 #1 (plus I had nothing else lined up as a post).
There were, unsurprisingly, 8 variants – one for each of the seven deadly sins and the group shot by interior artist Humberto Ramos…
GROUP SHOT – Humberto Ramos. Very ’90s – the team coming out of the steam, the team’s handlers (Ivana Baiul and Sideshow Bob) lording it over them – but effective.
ENVY – Michael Lopez. Sublime was the team’s resident powerhouse – and she happened to be rich and privileged too (not to mention Deathblow’s daughter). So you should, you know, envy her.
LUST – Kevin Nowlan. Okay, this is just creepy. Threshold, son of Team 7′s Stephen Callahan, was basically controlled by Ivana using sex and drugs. Also, he had a thing for his sister. Ew.
SLOTH – Jim Lee. Frostbite, team leader, was a bit of a bum. So I suppose it fits.
GLUTTONY – Glenn Fabry. Powerhaus used the emotions of people around him to bulk up and gain superstrength. He didn’t eat to do it, but whatever. Like most Fabry covers, I appreciate the art but I find it vaguely creepy.
GREED - J Scott Campbell. Bliss (Threshold’s sister) could use her powers to make people feel extremes of pleasure or pain, and usually did both in her one night stands – with fatal results. One can only imagine that she could make a lot of money with this…
WRATH – Liberatore. Evo was ‘the monstrous one’ of the team, but he was also the most immature. The whole ‘wolfing out’ thing started happening later in the series, I think – I seem to remember him being pretty mild mannered at the start.
PRIDE – Adam Hughes. Copycat was the team’s resident telepath with the ability to take over others. Copycat also had multiple personalities and was batshit crazy. So kind of like Legion, only prettier. Which is something to be proud of, I guess.
Weirdly, kind-of-probability manipulator Freestyle didn’t get a cover. You’d have thought that they would have put her on the Greed cover and lumped Bliss and Threshold together doing all kind of very wrong Lust type things.
You know, I really want to go and reread the series now – the early Warren Ellis stuff was especially good, but it was enjoyable pretty much all the way through.
Continue Reading »I loved DV8 back when it came out under Warren Ellis and Humberto Ramos – it was dark, funny, sadistic and a little bit ahead of its time – so this Brian Wood relaunch intrigues me. Thing is, I’m not really up to speed with the Wildstorm Universe at the moment.
Is it all still post-apocalyptic and stuff?
Actually, is anyone still reading Wildstorm comics?
Posted via web from Comic By Comic’s Wonderous Posterous!
Continue Reading »The translation of television to comic doesn’t always work too well. Whether it’s a combination of character likenesses, licensing approvals or whatever else, the comics rarely feel like the TV shows.
In fact, it usually seems to work better when the TV shows are off the air.
The X-Files had a decent run through Topps comics in the 90s – and Topps also ran Hercules: The Legendary Journeys and Xena: Warrior Princess books at the time, but where are Topps now?
These days, licenses seem to be split between IDW (Angel, Spike, Doctor Who and Star Trek) and Dynamite (Battlestar Galactica, Xena, Highlander, Army of Darkness), with Dark Horse picking up Star Wars, Firefly/Serenity and Buffy (of course) and Wildstorm snagging the occasional one – like Supernatural, X-Files and the long-rumored but never-confirmed Veronica Mars.
Thing is, I can rarely get into them. I want to, because I like the shows that they’re based on but they rarely feel ‘real’ to me. There’s the sense that it doesn’t really matter what happens in the comic because it will never, ever ‘count’.
The exception to the rule seems to be Buffy and Angel – and that’s probably helped by the fact that they involve the shows creators in them. But when you’re reading Battlestar Galactica, it seems unlikely that anything there will ever carry over into the show.
By and large, I just can’t get into them. Are they aimed at a different audience to regular comics readers? Does that audience ever cross into mainstream comics? Is there a way to get them too?
When I was talking about Wildstorm the other day (and Wildcats in particular) I voiced concern over the line wide soft reboot that seems to be taking place, where a big disaster is going to change the world.
It seems to me that the old ‘they can’t do this at DC or Marvel’ holds some weight…except of course that Marvel already tried it at least twice. Once with the New Universe…
…and once with the 2099 universe, where all the books were consolidated into an anthology title following life on Earth after a great flood destroyed most of the existing countries:
It didn’t work out too well for either of them. Why will Wildstorm fare any better?
I was, I admit it.
Not just teenage either because I loved a lot of Wildstorm’s output up to a few years ago.
I loved the book that started it all – the original WildC.A.T.s was great.
You know why?
They were wild. Not only that, but they were covert. They did action stuff. And, er, they were a team.
There was pretty much nothing not to like about the book. They had a big guy (Maul), a claw guy with temper issues (Warblade), a robot looking for a bit of humanity (Spartan), a short wise-guy genius type (Emp), a stripper with a heart of gold – wait, let’s look at that again…a stripper with a heart of gold.
Ah bless you, Voodoo you deliciously-tattooed stripper you (that piece is by Jim Lee from Gelatometti). Has there ever been a better concept for a stripper? Because I forgot to mention that she was a half-alien tattooed stripper?
Genius.
Oh, then there was Zealot, kick-ass ninja-type lady with a penchant for swords and, of course, the character find of 1993, Grifter.
Ah, Cole Cash. Tough guy, handy with the wisecracks and the guns, good looking but unable to reach the one true love of his life – and he had a mask that doubled as a handkerchief. What more could you ask for? I swear, I though that guy was going to be bigger than Wolverine.
Jim Lee’s art was a big part of the initial appeal, of course, but I credit the concepts behind the book – an age old war between alien races waging through the centuries – and the characters with being a big draw too.
Lee and co-writer Brandon Choi were followed by Alan Moore and Travis Charest; no slouches themselves, expanding the team and exploring the history of the Kherubim.
It went a little bit wrong later on, though, with Scott Lobdell taking them on trips through time and eventually the book was cancelled. Volume 2 took it in another direction, volume 3 was yet another well-reviewed take. Volume 4 was nothing short of a disaster.
And now the Wildstorm universe is being rewritten again and the Wildcats (somewhere along the way they dropped the abbreviation) are facing another change.
I can’t help but feel that Wildstorm has been mismanaged and mishandled over the past few years and what once had potential has now been pretty much squandered. It’s a shame because I really think that they could have been great.
Ah, WildC.A.T.s…you were something.
Continue Reading »Despite reports last week that Wildstorm would be publishing a Veronica Mars comic taking off from where the series left off, now it appears that this may not be happening any time soon…
In this week’s Ask Ausiello, TV Guide’s columnist Matt Ausiello had this to say:
Regarding VM, Rob Thomas is knee-deep in his new role as show-runner of ABC’s Miss/Guided, so plans to continue VM via DC Comics are a ways off. “Running a new show is more than a full-time job,” Rob tells me. “I only want to do the DC thing if I’m writing it, so it may take a while.”
This seems like an odd choice – I appreciate that Rob Thomas is busy, but why not farm it out to other writers and ‘show run’ it – in a Buffy season 8 kind of way? Surely it’s better to release the comic now when the show is fresh in people’s minds rather than wait until it fades?
Anyway – it looks like we may have to last a while longer to see what happens with Keith’s election, whether Logan is a marked man or whether Piz will piss off over the summer.
In other Veronica Mars news, Jason Dohring – better known as two-fisted Logan Echolls (I really need to stop calling him that) – has apparently assumed the role of Josef, an ancient vampire regular in upcoming CBS vampire-detective show Moonlight, which is run by Angel co-creator David Greenwalt.
So it doesn’t sound like Angel at all.
Dohring replaces Rade Serbedzija (24‘s one-armed Dmitri from the season just passed) in the role as apparently someone sussed out that you don’t have to be old to be an ancient vampire…
This post showed up on the E Online chat yesterday -
J in New York: I work at DC Comics, and you’ve got some big love here. There’s a bunch of us who take your word for gospel, and though it’s already sorta out there, we just wanted to send some info your way on the Veronica Mars comic books. They’ll be published by our Wildstorm imprint, which is based in San Diego, and R.T. is looking to be firmly on board. We’re even hoping for a late fall release of the first issue. Hopefully, more to come…
So I guess that’s unofficial confirmation – Wildstorm will be publishing a Veronica Mars comic – possibly starting as early as fall!
NOTE: This post has been edited to shorten the name on the original E! post – I don’t want to get anyone in trouble!
Continue Reading »Lordy, but its a big month from DC in September - lots of one-shots and minis kicking off. Taking a regular look at the solicits and seeing what piques my interest -
COUNTDOWN 34-31 – I’ve said it before but this series isn’t doing it for me. That said, I’m enough of a fanboy to stick with it in the hope that it will get better.
COUNTDOWN TO MYSTERY #1 – I have zero interest in the Dr Fate feature (originally meant for its own ongoing) but I am slightly intrigued by the Jean Loring-Eclipso one, so its possible I’ll take a look….
COUNTDOWN TO ADVENTURE #2 – Animal Man and Adam Strange are the draws here for me (I never liked Starfire despite her…er…attributes), but I’m also intrigued by Forerunner. And I can’t believe that I didn’t see a connection between her and Harbinger till last week. D’oh!
COUNTDOWN PRESENTS THE SEARCH FOR RAY PALMER: WILDSTORM #1 – Milking the cow much? I was under the impression that the search for Ray Palmer would be taking place in Countdown and the Atom – but here we are with Donna Troy, Kyle Rayner (more on him later) and Jason Todd travelling the multiverse as the Challengers of the Beyond…although I do like the idea of an Exiles-type group tripping through the 52 worlds – and looks like Wildstorm is first on the list!
THE ALL-NEW ATOM #15 – Confession time – I didn’t like the look of this in last year’s Brave New World one-shot, but I picked up #1-11 on ebay cheap and loved them. Loved them. It’s on the list till further notice – but why oh why isn’t Ryan searching for Ray with the team above?!?
SUPERGIRL #21 – Grr. I’m feeling the pull of Supergirl again…I’ll see what happens in Amazons Attack! that leaves her with such guilt (my guess: not saving a plane full of passengers) – although I’m not sure why it’s necessary to pile more angst onto the character; she works better as a carefree kid.
BOOSTER GOLD #2 – So looking forward to this book!
BLACK ADAM: THE DARK AGE #2 – I’m torn on this; I like ol’ Adam but now that I know (a) he gets his powers back and then gives them away again, and (b) his word is ‘Sorry’, I’m not sure what the point of this mini is.
THE BLACK CANARY WEDDING PLANNER, JLA WEDDING SPECIAL #1, THE GREEN ARROW/BLACK CANARY WEDDING SPECIAL #1 – So, uh is the wedding on? And are we sure we’re making a big enough deal of it?
JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA #13 – I’m glad that Dwayne McDuffie is taking over and really pleased that it looks like the League will be facing a serious threat – but this doesn’t mean that he’s leaving Fantastic Four does it?
WONDER WOMAN ANNUAL #1 – Wow. And only, what, a year since the first part of this storyline debuted? No regular issue this month either…but Gail Simone next month!!
WONDER GIRL #1 – I like Cassie so I’ll take a look at this, but I was hoping that any Amazons Attack! fall-out would be taking place in Teen Titans.
INFINITY INC. #1 – I like the original team, but I honestly cannot think of a less-deserving cast of characters getting their own book than the team introduced in 52. My dislike of John Henry Irons doesn’t exactly help sell me on this either…
SUICIDE SQUAD: RAISE THE FLAG #1 – The good: John Ostrander on Suicide Squad. The bad: No, nothing here. Sold!
GREEN LANTERN #23, GREEN LANTERN CORPS #16 – the Sinestro Corps storyline thunders on – but we all know there are other Corps out there…
TALES OF THE SINESTRO CORPS PRESENTS PARALLAX #1 -“the writer who introduced Kyle, Ron Marz, dissects what led Kyle to his downfall” - well that doesn’t sound good! Together with the blocked out cover and hints at Heroes Con, its obvious DC wants us to think that Kyle takes on the mantle of Parallax. Of course, the fact that Kyle is apparently so prominent in Countdown and the Search for Ray Palmer suggests otherwise. I have heard a rumor that it might be a different character as Parallax…a, er, super character that was reintroduced to DC in recent years…
2 Comments
TEEN TITANS #51 – Titans of Tomorrow return to take on the JLA. But…Kon-El is still on the team? Bart is now Zoom? And there’s a Flash on the JLA? (Coughcough…Lightning Saga…coughcough)
SUPERNATURAL: ORIGINS #5 – Good little book and the only Wildstorm one I’ll be getting in September.
Like I said, it’s a really busy month – and that’s not even taking into account trades and the like.
I think DC might be overloading it this time round – I know for certain that I’m not picking up everything I’m interested in so I suspect a lot of people won’t be. That said, I will be picking up the Flash! Mark Waid, people!!
Continue Reading »
I can’t help but feel that Wildstorm screwed the pooch with their relaunch of what, for want of a better phrase, I’ll call the WSU at the end of Captain Atom:Armageddon.
I actually enjoyed that mini quite a bit. I’d been away from the WSU proper (Planetary aside) since more or less the end of the first run of The Authority, so it was good to see the characters again – and then they went and pulled the rug out from under me at the end of the series by rebooting the universe.
Kind of.
And that’s where the problems start. I’ve read four of the Worldstorm relaunches that have come out over the last month, plus the Special, and to be honest it’s a mess. Some are pure reboots, some appear to pick up where the last series left off and some I have no idea.
Rule #1: If you’re going to reboot, commit to it and reboot, dammit. These soft reboots just confuse the reader.
Wetworks – as a concept isn’t bad- basically superhuman bad ass operatives including vampires and werewolves, but the first series wasn’t that great in the first place. Add to that the fact that the introductory issue managed to throw a lot in that didn’t make a whole lot of sense, and I passed on #2. It’s weird – I like Mike Carey’s work a lot and I’ve always liked Whilce Portacio’s style but they don’t gel at all. Not only that, but Portacio seems to have got more scratchy and dark since the last time I saw his work, and it makes for confusing images.
Gen13 – okay, Gail Simone and Talent Caldwell should have been a no-brainer but it just doesn’t work. What seems to be the hardest reboot of all (so none of the previous series seemed to have happened) recasts the team as genetically-engineered playthings. Add a twist that we’ve seen in Supreme Power (people employed as parents), The Truman Show (every aspect of their life monitored) and the Boys from Brazil (said parents murdered as a trigger), and you’ve got a hodge-podge of different ideas that just don’t feel fresh. Sorry guys.
Wildcats – okay, so this isn’t a reboot (which begs the question of the inner continuity nerd: what happened all those times where Cats characters fought alongside Gen 13 characters?) and actually Grant Morrison and Jim Lee work very well together. The problem here is that the next issue probably won’t come out till February – and nothing kills a book quicker than timing issues; just ask Hunter Killer.
The Authority – it’s funny but I probably enjoyed this book most of all the titles despite the fact that the titular team didn’t actually appear. Why? Well for a start, Morrison and Gene Ha know how to produce a comic. It’s engaging, beautiful to look at and a good read. The fact that the team doesn’t appear doesn’t change that; it just makes me nervous for when they do appear because it won’t be the book that I picked up this time round.
So what does that say?
Frankly, that this whole exercise has been a huge disappointment.
And its left me wondering whether Divine Right: The Adventures of Max Faraday ever really happened. Answers on a postcard…
Continue Reading »So after about 8 years and 26 issues (and do the maths on that one!), Planetary wrapped up their main plotline in yesterday’s issue, with the final confrontation between Elijah Snow and Jacob Greene (the erstwhile alternate universe Mr Fantastic). The book has one last issue to run – an epilogue of sorts wrapping up one last thing.
The amazing thing about this book has, for me, been the sheer inventiveness of Warren Ellis. From the very first appearance (in the back of a Gen13 issue) the Planetary team have been investigating the “archaeology of the impossible” – that is, the heroic archetypes that have littered the 20th century. That first prelude story (actually taking place after #1) the team found who was, for all intents and purposes, the Wildstorm version of the Hulk.
And there’s been very little sacred – Monster Island, Doc Savage, Superman, the Shadow – all were touched on in early issues. Eventually the larger picture came into view, the picture of a world controlled by The Four, a darkly sadistic version of Marvel’s FF. Who better to control the super-heroic world than the team who kick-started the Silver Age?
The world that the Planetary team inhabit is open to question too. Elijah Snow is a Century Baby, one of a handful born on 1/1/1900. Another CB is Jenny Sparks, founder of The Authority – another Ellis book – and they ran into each other in the Planetary/Authority crossover (the only succesful crossover the book has had – the JLA and Batman crossovers fared less well). So the implication is that the book takes place on the Wildstorm world – the presence of Carriers and the Bleed back this up. On the other hand, no Planetary elements have seeped into other WS books that I’m aware of.
And ultimately I don’t think it matters. What Ellis and the amazing John Cassaday have created here is an outstanding work of fiction that homages a lot of what has come before while laying out a great story as well.
Time will tell if #27 comes out at all at this point (presumably wrapping up the mystery of what happened to Ambrose Chase, former Planetary operative) – but even if it doesn’t, I could be happy with the series as it stands right now.
It’s a strange world.
Let’s keep it that way.
Continue Reading »- Ringing in the New Year with a theraflu watching Central Park fireworks from my kitchen #livingthehighlife http://t.co/p5XrdavM
- Wait. Did someone change twitter again while I was away? Serves me right.
- Happy New Year, Brits!
LEGO Advent Calendars!
