A sadistic billionaire with a goatee and Robin Hood get-up hunting down retired vets and the disenfranchised? No, it’s not another evil Batman from the dark multiverse. It’s another dip into the ever-expanding Wildstorm-verse, and that shit cray . . . Michael Cray.
Wildstrom: Michael Cray #2Cover by Khary Randolph
Written by Bryan Hill
Pencilled by N. Steven Harris
Inked by Dexter Vines
Colored by Dearbhla Kelly
Lettered by Simon BowlandMichael Cray hunts Oliver Queen…by making himself the prey. Stripped of his weapons and his newly formed team, Cray becomes the most dangerous game in Queen’s manufactured island, where the only law is survival. Queen has mastered his domain and the art of hunting men—Michael hasn’t mastered the tumor in his brain, and neither man is prepared for the extremity of the other…but only one will survive.
The first spinoff series of Warren Ellis’s hit reimagining of THE WILD STORM continues in MICHAEL CRAY #2.
“I don’t kill people because they’re bad at their jobs,” says Michael Cray, hunched over in the medical ward of his new handler’s compound. Going a couple rounds against a nefarious Green Arrow left him in need of a tight wrapping of compression tape around his ribcage. One one arm is basically a patchwork quilt of various bandages. “I need more than the ‘who,’ I need the ‘why.’”
Put simply, Michael Cray is going through some changes. It’s not just the brain tumor. It’s not just the somehow-related disintegration powers he’s developed – awesome as a party trick, crucial as a means of disarming one’s assailants. And it’s not just the new-found moral compass that’s helping direct his talent towards deserving targets. Given all this, there’s a rather significant revision to the personal narrative that’s running through his head. Cray’s dialog feels almost like a statement of intent for the series as an examination of who exactly he’s turning into and why it’s happening to him.
Or at least that’s all bubbling underneath “Michael Cray” #2, being “Wild Storm”-adjacent, means some degree of roiling, slow-burn should be expected. But on the surface, it seems like Bryan Hill and N. Steven Harris are crafting this as a takedown-of-the-week style comic, with Justice League members from some street-level darkest timeline showing up just to get shuffled off. Oliver Queen has the guest-billing this week, while the dominoes are being set up to watch Barry Allen fall next month or soon after. As such, any mileage you get out of this series will hinge on your appreciation of that as a concept. Given the main DCU is just about done churning through the evil batmen one-shots, it’s easy to think many readers might be getting fatigued on that as a concept. And from today’s vantage point, an ’80s style grim-and-gritty evisceration of a character’s thematic core probably seems just as gimmicky as watching the good-guys act the bastard strictly for the novelty of seeing them play the bastard.
But Hill and Harris are up to something a little sneakier. It feels like there’s a statement being made about recontextualization. Harris’s first panel shows a pair of zeppelins moored overtop a Victorian skyline. Hill’s ensuing steampunk-inspired sequence follows Cray as he doubles back across a rooftop to turn the tables on a group of would-be assassins. Turns out it’s a VR simulation created by potential recruits for Cray’s covert team, and it’s all a part of their vetting process. The steampunk trappings themselves feel like a knowing nod to gimmicky reinventions. But the fact the simulation fails – Cray survives – and he hires them all anyway, acts as a sort of validation. “Solid trap you set,” Cray praises. And when you combine that with his sentiments at the end about why being more important than whom, it seems like “Michael Cray” #2 might really hinge on not making snap judgments based on surface assessments.
Artistically, N. Steven Harris plays a lot with the idea that characters are hiding what’s going on within. There’s frequent use of panels cropped tightly to character’s faces. And this tendency helps to build an intimacy. But it feels like a feint. Almost every one of these faces is incomplete. People are three-quarters looking away. Some wear masks. The framing here and there obscures an eye or part of someone’s mouth. And the cumulative effect is that while these closeups feel like they should be drilling towards a kind of truth within these people, we never really do get to see the whole truth in anyone. “I should remind you not to underestimate her,” Cray is warned about Dr. Shahi, his attendant physician with whom he’s building rapport. “Like everything in our world, she’s more than what she seems.”
Continued belowBut let’s not forget that “Michael Cray” #2 is still a well-paced action comic. Harris’s linework might not be the most kinetic, but it is clean. And the clarity within the choreographed strikes and counterstrikes of combat acts as a suitable substitute to the impression of motion. While not derivative of Jon Davis-Hunt’s work, Steven Harris’s art is nicely aligned with the world laid out in “The Wild Storm.” It’s almost as though Davis-Hunt set up a house-style for the Wildstorm verse; and where the main book lounges in the study, Harris is getting raucous in the basement.
Bryan Hill and N. Steven Harris are slowly building up this book’s identity. And what it turns out to actually be, still remains to be seen. A great deal of that identity is probably entwined in their mustache-twirling takes on Justice Leaguers. But there’s also a clever argument brewing about the nature of recontextualization within the medium.
Final Verdict: 7.0 – Definitely worth keeping up with, if only to see which side it ultimately leans toward.
