BY DUSTIN CABEAL
There has been a WildStorm shaped hole in my heart since the imprint started pushing out turds and was eventually shut done in favor of a shared universe of all of DC’s properties, which became the New 52. Sure, there were WildStorm characters, and sure, they were pretty interesting to see in the DCU, but it just wasn’t WildStorm.

When it was announced that Warren Ellis would be curating a WildStorm line and that the first in that line would be The Wild Storm, I was excited… but hesitant. Don’t get me wrong, I love Ellis’ work, and even on an off day, I’ll still take it over a lot of other writers. It was more of a hesitant feeling of, “Are we simply doing this because we can or is there a story to be told still?” We’ll get to that because right after that thought was the reveal of Jon Davis-Hunt’s artwork, which is so striking that it makes you forget any doubt that you may have had. It’s also so damn good that looking that I wonder why I only just saw his work on The Clean Room and if I should send Gail Simone chocolate or coffee for helping in any way discover or at least reveal Davis-Hunt on a larger stage.

To answer the question, I posted before, yes, there is a goddamn story left to tell. Hell, there seems to be a lot of stories left to tell, and it makes me wonder as it will likely make you wonder, can Wild Storm come back as big as before and somehow co-exist with the current DCU landscape? If Ellis is in charge or picking the talent… I think it could.

The story is brilliantly paced and essentially introduces us the world and the character’s we’ll be dealing with. Frankly, I see no point in telling you anything about the story. It’s a lot of character moments that when pieced together reveal an overall narrative and it’s frankly some of Ellis’ best writing to date. Not that I don’t enjoy his creator-owned work, but there is something goddamn special about the story he’s telling here.

It should also be noted how masterfully Ellis’ writing is in that he gives each character a unique voice within just a few panels. There are writers that take entire story arcs to find one character’s voice and yet a side character we’re not likely to see again, had a unique voice in just one page. My personal favorite character was Angela Spica because she felt like a real person that I have encountered in life and that blew me away. Just how meticulous Ellis’ characterization for her was, blew me away.

I don’t even know what else to say about Davis-Hunt’s artwork. It's every bit as good as Clean Room, if not better. Perhaps the change in setting and characters has brought his art to a new level, but I found myself just looking at the artwork over and over. I would be lying if I didn’t say that Davis-Hunt was one of my favorite artists in the industry and I hope that he continues taking on interesting and great projects like The Wild Storm, like Clean Room because the last thing I want to see is him on Superman. Davis-Hunt’s visuals truly make this look like the rebirth of WildStorm, and that’s just fucking incredible.

Not to be left out is Ivan Plascencia’s coloring which is a perfect fit for Davis-Hunt’s artwork and brings it to life. The color choices are perfect and nowhere is that highlighted better than T-shirts. Yes, T-shirts, because I hate seeing bullshit colored T-Shirts in comics. Be trending for fuck’s sake and when I saw a powder blue T-Shirt that read “Portland” I was like, “Wow, someone colored a real T-shirt in a comic… wow.” I know that’s weird, but seriously look at people’s T-shirt’s in other comics and ask yourself if you’d wear that or see it worn by someone that wasn’t a complete asshole.

I will have to give this a few more issues before I can say for sure that it’s taking Deathstroke’s belt for the best comic DC is publishing, but it’s not one that you should miss. Buy this book. Enjoy this book because my God did it remind me of why I read comics when I so desperately needed that reminder. The Wild Storm #1 may just be the first perfect comic of 2017, and I’m already looking forward to more.

A review by Robert Coffil

Remember the days when superheroes used to just fight aliens or evil masterminds and their lackeys? Well, those days are gone. What comics are good at doing is reflecting the concerns and anxieties of an era. In the years gone by when you have heroes fighting giant radioactive bugs or corrupt politicians, they were indicative of specific apprehensions on almost a societal level. In The Wild Storm #1 Warren Ellis, Jon Davis-Hun, and Ivan Plascencia deliver a complex geopolitical thriller that provides the same type of social commentary as the comics of bygone eras. The concerns are no longer of mutual assured nuclear destruction and the nuclear fallout, or of just corrupt politicians. They are of Multinational Corporations and the power they can flex on the world’s population.

I was never a big fan of the Wildstorm line of comics back in the day. I read a few runs here and there, but I never followed them religiously. However, when I heard that Warren Ellis was going to be curating their relaunch under the DC banner I was immediately interested.

The Wild Storm #1 serves as a perfect jumping-on point for new readers and old die-hards of the previous incarnations. There are homages to the way things used to be and great introductions of characters and organizations for ‘the uninitiated’.

The Wild Storm #1’s first panel is of Zealot in, what seems to be, her old face painting and bright red uniform. However, the face paint is just blood from her ‘interview’ that turned violent. And the red uniform is just a red trench coat. It’s little nods like that which are subtle and tasteful but don’t exclude.

Ellis does a wonderful job setting the scene in this issue. It’s very Crash or Game of Thrones-esque in approach to framing this first issue. Almost everything that happens is in a very small space geographically and all the main players (that we know so far) are set up very well in their scenes. The interactions between the characters are not direct (unless they are), but usually, the previous scene does a great job of framing the action that comes next. Even though the story seems not to connect and all the players don’t seem to be interacting around a focal event there is a correlation that Ellis slides in the story subtly.

Jon Davis-Hunt does the work of 10 men in this issue. The Wild Storm #1 could not have been easy to draw. There are almost 6 panels on every single page and the character acting is detailed. I know Davis-Hunt from his work with Gail Simone on Clean Room. But this work here is next level from that. Whether it’s an action sequence portraying a woman clad in cutting edge armor saving a CEO from a nose-dive out of his skyscraper or a conversation between a pop star and her assistant about the mystical happenings in downtown New York, Davis-Hunt makes each panel come to life. What I thought was particularly masterfully done was the scene transitions. The perspective from which the reader is viewing the events is always perfectly placed and makes the transition from scene to scene so smooth you don’t realize you’ve left one group of characters and moved on to the next. The story telling is immaculate.

Ivan Plascencia’s colors work in this book. Everything except for Zealot has a muted pallet to it. It feels very Saving Private Ryan in terms of not using colors until you have to and then making them pop when they are used.

The Verdict
Buy it! When it comes to making comics that are great slow burn reads over an extended run, there is no one better than Warren Ellis. Already you can see the framework being laid for an epic story within The Wild Storm‘s pages. Hop on this train ride before you miss it!

I knew the book would be good with Warren Ellis at the helm, but the art's gorgeous too. Full review at http://pixelatedgeek.com/2017/02/review-the-wild-storm-1/

From the publisher: A troubled woman, barred by her employer from continuing her research, walks miserably through New York City. It takes her a moment to notice that everybody else is looking up. A man has been thrown from the upper floor of the Halo skyscraper.

And that woman—Angela Spica, sick from the transhuman implants she’s buried in her own body—is the only person who can save him.

What she doesn’t know is that the act of saving that one man will tip over a vast and secret house of cards that encloses the entire world, if not the inner solar system. This is how the Wild Storm begins, and it may destroy covert power structures, secret space programs and even all of human history.

New York Times best-selling writer Warren Ellis (TRANSMETROPOLITAN, RED, THE AUTHORITY) returns to DC to curate Jim Lee’s WildStorm world, with this debut issue resetting the WildStorm universe with new iterations of Grifter, Voodoo, the Engineer, Jenny Sparks and others.

To start with, I've enjoyed many of Warren Ellis's comics. He seems to tell stories on a very personal level while incorporating huge, crazy ideas (see: Stormwatch, Transmetropolitan, Moon Knight, etc.). Additionally, I've enjoyed reading many of the old Wildstorm books, particularly stories starring Grifter, the Stormwatch team, and Joe Casey's take on Wildcats. All that said, many of the more recent offerings, particularly when DC began integrating these characters into their regular universe, were a mixed bag. So, it was with held breath that I read Warren Ellis's The Wild Storm #1. I was very pleased to find that I enjoyed it, and look forward to reading future issues.

I can't really summarize this issue, as it's better read than explained. To be sure, this is very much a first issue, and it functions that way. Resetting many of the characters following the New 52 is going to take time and work. But Ellis does a fine job with this opening chapter in a his first arc. He appears to be starting slowly, introducing a few characters in this book, some of whom I recognized and some of whom I didn't. That's not to say it was slow, however. There was a lot of action and lot going on; Ellis shifted point of view characters several times, to expand the scope of the story. I'm looking forward to discovering/reading about Jack Hawksmoor, Grifter, and the Wildcats team in particular (I'm hoping they will be included as the story broadens).

I really enjoyed The Wild Storm #1. Ellis has written a good opening, and I trust him enough to see how this is all going to develop. I highly recommend this book, particularly to fans of the old Wildstorm books.

I received a preview copy of this book from DC Comics in exchange for an honest review.