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Battalion

From The Beginning: WildStorm Universe – Stormwatch #14-16

November 18, 2016 by krisis

[Patreon-Nov16-Post-Bug][/Patreon-Nov16-Post-Bug]Today we’re back to Stormwatch, and if I wasn’t adhering to a reading schedule this month you better believe I would be holed up in a corner reading nothing but Stormwatch because the suspense of reaching #25 is killing me.

Thanks to a brief tag with the time-traveling Timespan on issue #16 that loops back to his prologue in issue #9, it seems we’re meant to read this post’s issues and the prior one’s in a single self-affirming swath of doom.

Ron Marz spends this trio of issues delivering two of the kind of globe-trotting adventures we expect from the team, but the international action will be the farthest thing from your mind. That’s because he not only turns up the pressure on Battalion’s impending doom, but takes the time to finally make the equally doomed Diva a more round character (albiet with a lame “I’ll make you a better person” romance with Cannon).

stormwatch_v1_014Penciller Mat Broome is joined by Joe Phillips on Stormwatch #14, and combined with a totally new crew on colors it has some awkward moments. It’s a fine issue to work out those kinks, since despite containing some action Ron Marz’s script mostly focused on relationships and mercy.

We quickly learn why Battalion was so eager to take a leave of absence in the last arc. It wasn’t for peace and quiet – it was so he could infiltrate Skywatch and murder his father in his cryo-sleep! As he lurks in the so-called “Ice Box,” we get a glimpse of past foes like Talos, future ones like Stricture, and even some non-threatening figures who must be more than meets the eye. However, he can’t bring himself to kill his father.

We also learn more about the Diva and Cannon romance that has apparently been bubbling under ever since Ron Marz first hinted at it in Stormwatch Special. Their private moment is interrupted when Synergy as Weatherman inserts Stormwatch One into Northern Rwanda to protect refugees from the country’s civil war with strict instructions to engage the enemy only in self defense.stormwatch_v1_014_23When the team (Cannon, leading Diva, the reconstituted Hellstrike, Fahrenheit, and Strafe) finds that all but one of the refugees have already been slaughtered, Cannon takes it upon himself to hunt down the perpetrators and only Diva can stop him (both with reason and ass-kicking) from killing them in revenge.

The issue ends with a brief stinger in Defiles sanctum, where he’s seemingly threatened by Warblade only to discover it’s a shapeshifter named White. Curiously, he plans to deploy White to disrupt the WildCATs, not Stormwatch.

stormwatch_v1_15Stormwatch #15 opens with us still in Defile’s lair, and here we learn what he has in store for Stormwatch – a massive genetically engineered creature incubating in a tank.

Synergy the Weatherman (whose hair is already grown out since last issue) has met with all of Stormwatch One to reprimand them for their actions in the last issue – they’re more of the sort of rogue decisions that got her an unwanted promotion. When she gets to Diva, she has only thanks for her leadership, which leads Diva to confront Cannon about his behavior.

Battalion is starting to lose his cool (and his mind?) about his impending death, but his quiet tinkering time in the workshop is interrupted by the always awful Flashpoint. The brash Stormwatch Prime member goals Battalion into a fight and gets thoroughly whupped.

Their confrontation is interrupted by an all-hands on deck notice from Weatherman. A massive humanoid bearing a device that looks like a bomb is in the process of King Kong-ing its way up Mauna Loa in Hawaii – the largest active volcano in the world. Stormwatch One heads in, lead by Battalion and comprised of everyone except the unstable trio of Stormwatch Prime.

stormwatch_v1_16Mat Broome and colorist Steve Firchow have settled in on Stormwatch #16, which makes for a crackling climactic issue. (Weirdly, there is a single page colored flatly without digital gradients, and it looks amazing. It goes to show that Broome’s talent isn’t all in the digital trickery of the coloring.)
The assembled Stormwatch One is unable to dent the massive purple creature sent by Defile despite multiple attacks. Battalion distracts it long enough to get in close and rip the bomb away from where it’s grafted on the creature’s back.

We’ve seen both Hellstrike and Winter contend with massive explosions in recent issues, but Battalion takes it upon himself to absorb this detonation within a bubble of psychic power. Timespan drops by to witness him doing the deed just long enough to stop Diva from interfering. Battalion contains the blast, but his body is left limp and lifeless in its wake.

Artist Trevor Scott stops by to render an epilogue in the past, as Timespan returns to to the unlikely 12th century Normandy for a breather. Despite his seemingly random choice, the fellow traveller we glimpsed back in Gen13 #1/2 catches up to him and says she’ll end his “tampering.”

Ah, is Timestream not as benevolent as he lead us to believe? He slips away after a punishing blast from Nadia to return to his Prologue scene from Stormwatch #9 – which means he whisked Battalion to the future straight from overseeing his death!

Here’s the schedule for the rest of this month’s WildStorm re-read. It’s going to be another tortuous week before we’re back to Stormwatch to see what happens in the wake of Battalion’s death. Tomorrow we break ground on a new series, Backlash #1-4!

Need the issues? You’ll need to purchase single issues – try eBay (#14-16) or Amazon (#14, 15, 16). Since further series reached these same issue numbers, be sure to match your purchase to the cover images in this post.

Filed Under: comic books Tagged With: Battalion, From The Beginning, From The Beginning: WildStorm Universe, Image Comics, Mat Broome, Ron Marz, Stormwatch, Trevor Scott, Wildstorm

From The Beginning: WildStorm Universe – Stormwatch #6-8

November 7, 2016 by krisis

[Patreon-Nov16-Post-Bug][/Patreon-Nov16-Post-Bug]Are you ready to get political?

This trio of issues of Stormwatch play up the geopolitical aspects of the team in a big way while also serving satisfying action and backstory and fantastic arc. Despite some 90s tropes along the way, the title has hit its stride as a high-quality comic.

stormwatch_v1_006The opening two-issue arc of this run is firing on all cylinders. Issue #6 is the heftiest WildStorm comic I’ve read so far. It has political intrigue, finally gives the team around Battalion some depth, and continues Stormwatch’s genius streak of nodding to its implied deep well of personnel and their accompanying stories.

Then, #7 is a well-paced battle that limits the amount of reversals and people back from seeming KOs. Thanks to the lack of see-sawing, it has a legitimate “hooray!” moment at the climax, especially when the dispassionate Weatherman joins in piling on the enemies.

Brandon Choi wisely leans heavily on the caption boxes in issue six, helping us get reacquainted with the team – who we haven’t seen together outside of the special since the opening of the first issue.

This is at once a strength and weakness of Stormwatch. It has a large enough cast with multiple teams, historical personnel, supporting staff, and enemy mercs that sometimes I can go issues without ever being entirely sure of someone’s name or power.

That’s emphasized by the fact that we’ve stayed almost entirely with Battalion (and, briefly, Backlash) as our POV characters so far. At this point we know enough about Diva, Fuji, and Winter, but past that trio things get hazier – especially as Choi seems intent for us to pick up on their countries of origin from a few spare foreign words, which is a bit less than we had to go on in Giant Size X-Men.

Issue #8 adds a few surprising names to the credits – H. K. Proger co-scripts, and Jim Lee contributes layouts along with Scott Clark for Trevor Scott to finish. It’s also surprises on just about every page, which makes for an engrossing single issue.

Amidst a lot of great material, two things stick out in a big way:

One is Ripclaw and Rainmaker as indigenous characters without a lot of stereotyping attached. Sure, we get the opening monolog about the Apache Warrior, but otherwise they’re two heroes who the story happens to focus on in a clear callback to the first issue. It’s not “A Very Special Indigenous Episode of Stormwatch.” It also gets the politics right, by identifying the US forces as rogue agents on sovereign land (an interesting contrast with Stormwatch’s role in the prior issue).

Two, is that we get a great, brief training session with Battalion and Backlash that actually deepens their characters and advances the plot! It leads to another strong conversation with Backlash. Sure, it’s just setting up Backlash’s spinoff series, but why can’t Choi manage that on WildCATs!

Want the play-by-play? Keep reading for a summary of these two teams going head to head. Here’s the schedule for the rest of this month’s WildStorm re-read. Though both Kindred and Gen13 are referenced in today’s read, we’ve got some more WildCATs ground to cover first, starting with #8-9 tomorrow. Enjoy the light reading day!

Need the issues? You guessed it – never before collected! You’ll need to purchase single issues – try eBay (#6-8) or Amazon (#6, 7, 8). Since further Stormwatch series hit these same issue numbers, be sure to match your purchase to the images in this post.

[Read more…] about From The Beginning: WildStorm Universe – Stormwatch #6-8

Filed Under: comic books Tagged With: Backlash, Battalion, Cyberforce, From The Beginning, From The Beginning: WildStorm Universe, Gen13, Image, Kindred, Ripclaw, Stormwatch, Wildstorm

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