Kindred Archives

[Patreon-Nov16-Post-Bug][/Patreon-Nov16-Post-Bug]Today we’re tackling the first WildStorm book to deliberately connect their various franchises – The Kindred mini-series.

We’ve seen many hints dropped throughout WildStorm’s books about International Operations and Team 7. It’s obvious that it has some resemblance to the retconned Weapon X program, which turned out many more characters than just Wolverine.

The Kindred capitalizes on these dropped hints to tell a new story that isn’t just expositional history, but that ties several pieces of information together along the way.

The book is more memorable for those revelations than for its plot. For a title starring the electric Grifter, the badass Backlash, and the mysterious Lynch, it seems like it could have escalated to a considerably higher-intensity.

Maybe the simmering intensity level is a good thing – it corrects the pacing issues that hurt the opening arcs of both WildCATs and Deathblow, presenting easy-to-follow rising action with a definitive end-point.

There’s no single credit for scripting on this book. At points it shows in the torrent of gently conflicting information. Also, while Grifter and Backlash bumping heads ought to be a teeth-gritting delight, somehow their combined prickliness slightly waters them both down.

Backlash is a character whose coolness isn’t fully justified by what we’ve seen from him so far on the page. He’s lithe, gray-haired, wields a whip, wears a slick black suit, and can dematerialize into fog. It’s all dangerous, but altogether it doesn’t suggest a terrifyingly deadly character we ought to be scared of. He definitely qualifies as “the most arrogant man alive” for all his bragging and complaining, but not the deadliest. Kindred doesn’t really do him any favors – he gets beat up more often than not, here, and he’s a lot of bark with relatively little bite.

(Grifter, on the other hand, just keeps getting cooler now that we know he went AWOL from Team 7 thanks to his unrequited love, is hated equally by Backlash and Lynch, and was the softy who tried to save his teammates who got left behind. Also? Still no hint of his powers.)

The villainous elements of the mini-series are needlessly complex. The Kindred’s leader Bloodmoon isn’t even a Kindred and the result of a totally separate Team 7 caper, which leaves a lot of questions and ultimately makes The Kindred sort of window dressing in their own story. It also leaves a lot of open questions about Bloodmoon that a little dose of simplicity could have solved better than more explanations.

Art from Brett Booth is solid and enjoyable. All of the characters are recognizable and Booth draws clear action that’s easy to track. His characters can have a slight Spider-Man rubbery-ness to them that calls back to earlier Eric Larsen or even Todd McFarlane. That this would become somewhat of a trademark of Backlash rather than a more muscular stance is definitely down to Booth’s early influence on the character.

The biggest reason to include this in your WildStorm read? Context, glorious context. We finally understand Director Lynch’s place in the WildStorm Universe, and how Team 7 and IO are linked with the history of Stormwatch.

Want the full details? Read on to learn more about the connective tissue of the WildStorm Universe. Here’s the schedule for the rest of this month’s WildStorm re-read. Tomorrow we head back to WildCATs to see Jim Lee reunited with his X-Men co-conspirator Chris Claremont on WildCATs #10-13!

Need the issues? This is a rare early WildStorm title with a TPB collection! Look for it on Amazon and eBay. Also, the single issues to this series tend to be pretty cheap – try eBay (#1-4) or Amazon (#1, 2, 3, 4). Since a second Kindred mini-series hit these same issue numbers, be sure to match your purchase to the cover images in this post. [Read more…] about From The Beginning: WildStorm Universe – The Kindred #1-4

[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_006 The 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.