User blog:S.T.A.R.S Pencil Pusher/They're heroes, not zeros.

Ok, the title refers to a lyric sung during the old WildC.A.T.s cartoon. It was cheesy, hokey and I'm not sure if anyone actually liked it because no one I know has ever talked about it. I just found the lyric hysterical.

So here we are at the (re)birth of Jim Lee's WildStorm universe, that as far as I can tell is starting completely fresh. This is a good thing, because if I had to live through another decade of belts, thongs and pouches again, I may have had to scream into my Cybernary body pillow. Instead we are getting a reboot that could have taken place at the height of WildStorm's critical success. Y'know, when basically Warren Ellis burned down the house and rebuilt it. Warren brought a cutting edge coolness and realism to the universe that was essentially a bad Marvel Knock-off up to this point (I say that with love, well, my teen-self says it with love).

Sure, Alan Moore brought some much needed depth and coherent world-building to the 'verse with his run on WildC.A.T.s (and where I had my first and only letter published in #24). But it wasn't until Warren Ellis came on the scene and took the Stormwatch title to a whole new height of excellence. Stormwatch begat The Authority with Bryan Hitch (the artist he brought over from Stormwatch's final year). Other titles like Ellis's own Planetary, Ed Brubaker's Hard Target and Sleeper, Joe Casey's evolution of Wildcats and Ellis and Brandon Choi's original run and Brian Wood's later DV8 displayed a maturity and featured progressive characters, relationships and situations that I hadn't seen before in a shared comic universe.

Now Warren is set to do it again, or at least try.

Making a Real World
Whether it's his Marvel work (Thunderbolts, Moon Knight), his creative own (Global Frequency, Freak Angels) or other media projects (G.I. Joe Resolute, Dead Space, Justice League Unlimited). Warren tells his stories with real relatable people in extraordinary situations that seem just a step to the right in the future. Things like the potential of the human mind, technology just being discovered or only in the realm of theory. Warren was writing this stuff before Fringe got to it on television. Also, his characters punch a lot.

The world of The Wild Storm seems to be going in this direction of near theorized future design. We see billboards for Jacob Marlowe's HALO corporation advertising solar energy and batteries for life seemingly available to everyone. Technology that has cracked the nanomachine riddle and secret organizations that are still doing shady things. Paranoia and conspiracies covers the pages of Ellis's script, whether it's urban legend, government black ops or private corporate shenanigans, everybody is watching their backs.

Characters
The way Ellis introduces the characters in a very cinematic, almost Guy Ritchie everything-is-connected-way also shows us that it's not going to take long before all of these characters start interacting with each other. That was the one thing Wildstorm never seemed very comfortable with before. Everyone pretty much stayed in their own little corner of the WSU most of the time, their crossover events were never that memorable to me (Wildstorm Rising,Fire From Heaven). But here, Warren is handpicking what heroes he wants and I have the feeling we are going to see very diverse groupings for whatever teams he decides to bring back to the fold.

The people who do show up seem to be retaining their core personalities. Zealot is serious but with a sense of irony, Marlowe is the fun uncle hiding secrets. Angie is a little off, we've always seen her as the confident tech-genius, but here she is given a few more cracks to her foundation, but considering what she has been doing to her body one can't blame her current frayed state. Miles Craven is very different, he's younger, funnier, charismatic BUT still retains his bastard gameface. Michael Cray aka Deathblow is no nonsense but we haven't seen enough of him yet to get a good grasp of his personality. Adrianna (Void) is still a mystery but seems to have a good relationship with Marlowe again (and is stuck in her cosmonaut suit). Voodoo is the most changed next to Craven. Here she's a confident young entertainer (not stripper thank goodness) compared to the unsure teen from the original run. If you know these characters you'll recognise them fairly easily, if not then you will certainly at least grasp a basic sense of them in this issue.

Plot & Setting
Modern or slightly in the future Manhattan,NY is where the action takes place, as for plot, well, there is a LOT going on with very few answers, but y'know what? Good. Warren is going to make you work for this, not everything will be laid out in the first issue, motives will not be crystal clear, alliances are foggy but I recommend to you, don't fight it, just enjoy the ride and trust in the writer that the answers are forthcoming. This is a serial, this is world building, this is a journey. We have some major players set-up, a few sub plots being laid out and a main story involving a secret war between HALO and I/O. Isn't it more fun to talk about theories and speculations then have everything laid out in the first issue? I mean, he could have done that, sure. Just look at the first issue of Global Frequency or Planetary for an example (but even those would grow more complicated). But this is not the case here, and I'm kinda glad it isn't.

Conclusion
Warren, along with artist designer Jon Davies-Hunt who brings a fantastic contemporary feel to this new WSU (buh-bye outdated superhero costumes, hello gorgeous modern fashions) and a realistic architecture to both exteriors and interiors, are creating something unique again for DC. As I myself drift further away from the mainstream capes & cowls scene, I look towards new ways to tell hero stories of the fantastic. If those stories feature characters I used to love as a teen/young adult and breathes new life into them (Young Animal also does it extraordinary well) then I'm the more happy for it. Kudos to Jim Lee for getting Warren (never look back) Ellis to return and handing him the keys to the WSU. Best executive decision he's made since his promotion.