Review: The Wild Storm #1

The Wild Storm #1: Cover by Jon Davis-Hunt

 

In The Wild Storm #1, DC Comics architect and Wildstorm founder Jim Lee tasked veteran writer Warren Ellis to reinvent his beloved superhero universe for today's generation. 

 

From the first page, we know Warren Ellis has adopted a new sensibility. There's no hint of stylized superheroes. Instead, we find people adopting a pragmatic approach to protecting our world against the dangers that threaten it today.

 

It's an approach that's invaded big-budget Hollywood thrillers, and taken over TV police dramas.

It's dark, gritty, and very, very real. 

Still, like any good dramatist, Ellis finds ways to lighten such heavy themes. A little bit.

Along with a twenty-four hour news cycle, threats from criminals, terrorists, and nefarious organizations and governments never cease. Thus, our characters are always alert, always looking for where the enemy will strike next.

 

Even a supposedly off-duty Miles Craven, the director of the deep black government department known as International Operations, is always on the lookout. 

So is his husband Julian, who I expect we'll learn more about in later issues.

Jon Davis-Hunt's previous penciling and inking work impressed Warren Ellis with its "clean line, its modern feeling, his attention to acting and body language as well as his attention to detail and environment." Apparently, when Kieron Gillen showed him Hunt's work, Ellis' first reaction was, "That's my artist."

"And I was right, too," Ellis asserts in the interview in the back of The Wild Storm #1.

In that interview, Ellis said he wanted to look "at the conspiracy-theory landscape of today, so there was a lot of research on, for example, the current state of UFOlogy and the extraterrestrial hypothesis." He puts this to work immediately with an incredible transformation a young woman undergoes in this first of two incredibly detailed pages by Jon Davis-Hunt.

What if you saw a man falling out of a skyscraper? What if a woman standing beside you suddenly transformed into a flying, mechanized being? Wouldn't you wonder, just a little, if this person was really human?

 

On the other hand, rich technologist Jacob Marlowe comes across as all-too-human. You can see just how shaken he is, thanks to Hunt's penciling and inking, and Ivan Plascencia's coloring.

 

In The Wild Storm #1, there are no narration boxes or sound effects. Only two times does color invade a dialogue balloon. Still, letterer Simon Bowland has his work cut out for him with all the characters' interactions. 

If you prefer a wham-bang-boom five-minutes-and-its-over read, this comic definitely isn't for you!

Wildstorm Trade Paperback Volume 1

 

With Jon Davis-Hunt*, and presumably the rest of the creative team, Warren Ellis wrote four books (his words) in twenty-four issues. His first book, or graphic novel, features a stunning cover by Jim Lee and inker Scott Williams. In those first six issues, Ellis reintroduces such storied characters as Jacob Marlowe, Grifter, Voodoo, Zealot, Miles Craven, Michael Cray, and...that woman who turned into a flying mechanized person. I want to know more about all of them, don't you?

Congratulations to Warren Ellis, Jon Davis-Hunt, and the entire creative team on updating Jim Lee's wildly successful superhero universe for today's sensibilities!

Dragon Dave

*To see Jon Davis-Hunt's latest work, check out Valiant Comics' Shadowman #1, on sale today.