There are a lot of comics out there, but some just stand out head and shoulders above the pack. With “Don’t Miss This” we want to spotlight those series we think need to be on your pull list. This week, we look at Warren Ellis’s rebooted version of the WildStorm universe in “The Wild Storm.”
“The Wild Storm” is written by Warren Ellis, illustrated by Jon Davis-Hunt, colored by Steve Buccellato, and lettered by Simon Bowland.
What’s it all about?
“The Wild Storm” is a series preoccupied with the power of secret organizations. It shows us a world controlled by two competing organizations, International Operations (I.O.) and Skywatch. The series, so far. has been about the slow build from cold war to an all-out war between these two groups. I.O. operates on the ground as a CIA-esque organization, controlling much of what happens on the actual planet Earth, working with its cover action teams (CATs) to keep a hold on technology and power. Skywatch, operating out of an orbital base in space, has control over everything outside Earth’s atmosphere. On top of these two massive organizations, there are smaller, third parties, like Jacob Marlow’s HALO, a tech giant with hidden alien origins also fighting to get a foothold on controlling the world. And then, behind that, there are the competing alien forces of the Kherabim and Daemonites, both lurking in the shadows, though it doesn’t seem like they will be there for long. The first half of the series spent a lot of time building up this world, showing off these organizations and characters, but now that the series is halfway through Ellis’s intended run of 24 issues, things are really starting to pop off.
Warren Ellis has taken all the ingredients from the old WildStorm universe and remixed them into a dense, complicated techo-thriller. The series doesn’t require any prior knowledge of the old WildStorm universe to understand it but for people who were fans, there are a number of Easter eggs as well as the fun of seeing Ellis take these characters and concepts in completely new directions.
Jon David-Hunt uses very clean, precise layouts for the series, lending everything a sense of order, even as the entire world starts to spiral out of control. His panel layouts, many of which rely on the nine-panel grid, help to recreate the sense that everything in “The Wild Storm” is controlled, that every eventuality has been calculated and thought out. It helps to put the reader into the same kind of head space as many of the principal characters. Henry Bendix, the head of Skywatch, is a raging megalomaniac that looks down on the Earth from orbit who knows how small all the regular people out there are. Miles Craven and his team at I.O. are more of a CIA type organization, and they feel perfectly within their rights to conduct assassinations pretty much with impunity. With all these powerful men doing pretty much whatever they want, the clean panels and layouts help to create the world in the way they see it, even if that world is quickly moving out of control.
Davis-Hunt’s linework is just as clean as his layouts and he is able to take both long sequences where it is mostly just two characters talking to one another (of which there are many in this series) and make them still feel interesting and exciting. Davis-Hunt has an eye for action that is one of the best in the business. The way that he paces the action sequences, the movement he is able to convey in each panel, the gritty tension of each of these fights. . . . The colors provided Steven Buccellato also help keeping everything in the series clean and delineated.
It’s important the art stay relatively easy to comprehend because the story Ellis is weaving takes a bit of thought to understand. For most of the series so far, there had been a build up of different secrets and histories, all piling one on top of the other, but not providing any definitive answers. At the end of the first six issues, when it seemed like it was a story about the tech giant HALO fighting with I.O., we learned there was actually an entire secret history of aliens going on in the background. With “The Wild Storm” #12, even as the series seemed to be bring some of its plot lines to a head, there are still more secrets being introduced. At times it can feel like the plot of the series takes one step forward, only to reveal a secret that sends us two steps back, but that’s also part of the fun. The world Ellis is reimagining here is so layered, with so many players, factions, and goals, it makes sense that we should always be learning new things about it. In the best way possible, the series reads a bit like Lost, but when it still felt like all of the mysteries might have a satisfying ending.
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The first six issues of the series are collected in the trade “The Wild Storm” vol 1, with the second trade releasing next week, which would have you pretty much caught up with where the series is now. These trades, and all the individual issues, can also be found digitally.
