Member Reviews

Compelling and original art compared with a good storyline make this a desirable new graphic novel to have on shelves. Warren Ellis keeps up his deserved high reputation with this one.

Was this review helpful?

This graphic novel has some great artwork and explores some antiheroes that haven't been explored nearly as much as the more popular one in the DC universe. This book shows that that has been a mistake and these antiheroes need their time to shine!

Was this review helpful?

Weird and interesting, Ellis brings his brand of interesting quirk to the book. I'm in for the next volume. :)

Was this review helpful?

The arc that Ellis wrote for the
Stormwatch series from the
sadly defunct Wildstorm
publishing house
were one of my first forays into
non Big Two waters.
That brilliant story
taught me that a great comic
can come from
anywhere
and I should really be
following creators not
characters.

This return to the Wildstorm
universe by Ellis is nothing short of
mind blowingly awesome.

This book begins the
reimagined Wildstorm Universe
springing from the mind
of Ellis.

Delivering on the heafty
promise of a Warren Ellis
left to his own devices
this book was instantly
one of my favorites of 2017.

Was this review helpful?

Take the X-Files, mix in Area 51, Roswell, and most conspiracy theories of secret organizations running the world and you will end up with the world of The Wild Storm. There are two major secret organizations striving to control the earth - International Operations and Skywatch. But when an rogue IO agent by accident saves the head of HALO Corporation from an IO assassination attempt, things get thrown for a loop with old treaties been breached, new relationships being formed and investigations being launched. If you enjoy plenty of action and intrigue, you are likely to enjoy The Wild Storm!

Was this review helpful?

This was an EXCELLENT read. I've never read a Wildstorm book, but this was a great book to dive into. Between the intriguing world building done by Ellis, and the fantastic art by Hunt, this is not a book to be missed.

Was this review helpful?

The concept for this was intriguing enough but the exception left a lot to be desired. Parts of the plot were either not well thought out or were not explained well enough which left me clueless as to what was going in some cases. Probably won't pick up V.2

Was this review helpful?

The Wild Storm is the first volume in a new, rebooted series from DC Comics.

Having not read the original series, I had no expectations going into this and no preconceived idea as to what would occur. All I can say is that I was, and still am completely blown away by how much I loved this. Words cannot describe how I feel about this and I cannot wait to get to my nearest comic shop to buy this series monthly.

All that my brain can say about what occurs in The Wild Storm Volume 1 is that the art style is a throwback to olden comics. It is set in a 3 x 3 grid, with it occasionally merging 2 or 3 of the panels together.

Whilst I suspect that this will not be to everyones tastes, Wild Storm will leave you wanting more.

Was this review helpful?

Warren Ellis has taken all of the background stuff from the early Wildstorm books of the 90's and kind of kept it the same. It's just as boring now as it was 25 years ago. IO, Stormwatch, and Halo are three rival organizations jockeying position with one another. Most of the characters are unlikable and there's not a lot of story here. Outside of a couple of fight scenes, the book is two people talking in a room about dense subject matter with no background. But ultimately the book just bored me to tears.

Was this review helpful?

A brilliant relaunch from the ever reliable Warren Ellis with superb art from 2000ad stalwart Jon Davis-Hart.

Was this review helpful?

I really liked this. Great collaboration by a talented artist (Jon Davis-Hunt) at the top of his game and one of comicdom's greatest living writers, Warren Ellis. I wasn't in at the start of the original Wildstorm, so maybe I don't have the inside track on how this is a pale imitation of what came before, but I enjoyed this opening salvo in what I'm sure will only get better in subsequent volumes. We've got a down-on-her-luck engineer who all of a sudden sprouts a robot body and flies up to save the CEO of an Apple-like tech company who has just been pushed out the window, seemingly to his death. This simple action blows the lid off of a covert war between a secret intelligence agency that basically controls the world, and a couple of other organizations trying to keep the first in check. So far, this is Ellis in his espionage, covert action mode, not unlike his work in Red, with lots of fight scenes, lots of violence. Ellis the big thinker hasn't really made an appearance here as yet, but give him some time. I'm sure he'll be along presently. This was a great start to what I hope will be a line that can live up to this original promise. Very excited to see what follows.

Was this review helpful?

Having successfully relaunched their main superhero titles under the Rebirth banner as well as their Hanna-Barbera line and their new indie imprint Young Animal, DC has turned its attention to their old Wildstorm label which is given a makeover by Warren Ellis in The Wild Storm. And, disappointingly, it’s pants!

I’m not gonna pretend I was a huge Wildstorm fanboy but they published some of the most undeniably original and inventive comics of its day and I enjoyed a number of their titles like Brian K Vaughan/Tony Harris’s Ex Machina and Sam Kieth’s The Maxx. Most significantly for me as a Warren Ellis fan, Wildstorm was a playground for Ellis where he produced some of the comics that made me a devoted fan of his. Among them was the enormously entertaining and hyper-violent action thriller Red (later adapted into two watered-down, unmemorable Bruce Willis movies) and the imaginative galactic X-Files-esque series, Planetary.

My favourite Ellis/Wildstorm title though was The Authority. At a time when teenage me was jaded with mainstream superhero comics, along came this appealingly subversive, cynical, and very adult series that effortlessly held my interest and re-energised the genre. You could semi-accurately summarise the cast as a piss-take of the Justice League but they were better than that. Jenny Sparks, the Spirit of the Age, Angie the Engineer, Jack Hawksmoor, Midnighter and Apollo – they were a colourful, imaginative bunch who went on amazing intergalactic adventures on their giant living alien ship, leaping through portal-doors across mind-bending space (The Bleed) to save the world again and again.

So I was delighted to hear not only was Wildstorm getting relaunched but its finest writer was at the helm. How could this not be good? Well. This is how. The Wild Storm, Volume 1 is about dreary businessmen from rival tech firms stealing each other’s corporate secrets. What. The. Shit? Ellis couldn’t have conceived of a more dull premise. It reads nothing like any Wildstorm book!

Maybe it’s not fair to compare The Wild Storm to The Authority but the most prominent characters here are former Authority characters. Angie the Engineer (cosplaying as Nemesis the Warlock for some reason) is basically the main character who’s stolen tech to become a living robot. Why? To what end? What’s her arc? Pass, pass and pass. RUBBISH. Bendix appears in some scenes, growling like a grumpy human bear to no effect. Jenny Sparks (in name only) appears and doesn’t do anything. Nobody’s favourite character, Grifter (of the WildCATS), shoots some faceless goons. Oh my god… really?

This was an immensely boring read. Shite characters, rambling, incoherent, utterly crap pseudo-storyline, flat dialogue, unmemorable scene after unmemorable scene, no clear direction or any vision - I can’t believe this is what Ellis came up with for the relaunch. The Wildstorm books I read, particularly The Authority ones, were exciting; The Wild Storm, Volume 1 is the polar opposite. I haven’t read any of those books in years so I don’t know if they hold up but I’d still highly rec any of the old Wildstorm books over this grey, bland garbage.

Was this review helpful?

Sono un lettore appassionato di Warren Ellis, su cui però negli anni mi sono formato questa opinione: aldilà dell’indubbia professionalità, è uno scrittore che ha moltissimo da dire su alcune tematiche (in primis il futurismo nelle sue più varie declinazioni), ma che risulta poco flessibile quando non gioca sul suo terreno.
In questo caso, è l’operazione in sé a essere inevitabilmente rischiosa: affrontare in maniera aggiornata e credibile un universo narrativo che porta addosso l’odore incancellabile degli anni ’90. E questo, per i lettori di comics della mia generazione, è tutto meno che positivo: gli anni ’90 sono stati sì l’epoca della liberazione degli autori verso le clausole vessatorie delle case editrici maggiori, ma anche quelle in cui si è barattata la credibilità delle storie e lo sviluppo dei personaggi con tanta violenza ipercinetica, fucili mitragliatori più grossi di Terminator, capigliature improbabili e, non scordiamocelo, tasche-tasche-tasche-tantissime-inutili-tasche! (Ogni riferimento a Liefeld è naturalmente casuale…).
Ma torniamo a noi. Warren Ellis sa scrivere? Cacchio, sì, molto bene. Ha le idee chiare su cosa vuole raccontare? Check anche su questa casella, e anzi le appendici mettono bene in chiaro che la sceneggiatura è stata preceduta da un buon lavoro di riflessione sugli elementi-chiavi dell’universo narrativo da ri-raccontare. E allora cos'è che francamente non mi ha convinto? Mah, forse il fatto che da un lato si basi su presupposti inesorabilmente fragili, dall’altro che la trama si caratterizzi fin dall’inizio come un preludio a The Authority. E non perché Warren Ellis voglia essere auto-celebrativo, ma proprio perché The Authority era in un certo senso l’unico modo di redimere quel genere di personaggi e situazioni.
L’aspetto grafico è invece di primissima qualità ed è evidente la sintonia sceneggiatore/disegnatore, soprattutto nell’ottica del tecnofoticismo.

Was this review helpful?

The Wild Storm Vol. 1 - Warren Ellis is a remake of one of the premier Image titles, WildC.A.T.S. In its inception, the original comic was flashy with large glossy artwork and comic pages that barely contained two panels of story. This was very typical of the early Image books as they were driven by the art and not so much by the story. WildC.A.T.S. was then sold off to DC Comics in 1999 and published under one of their smaller publishing houses; Wild Storm and after several runs, may have done the title and team right with The Wild Storm, written by Warren Ellis.

Angela Spica, sick and disillusioned from being a subject of transhuman implants buried in her body notices everyone on the street looking up. She can see a man falling to his death and she knows she is the only person who can save. In a moment she transforms and flys up to save the man. What she finds out is that the man was thrown out the window of this building and that the man is the mult-millionaire Jacob Marlowe. This act sets in motion a chain of events that will both terrorize and thrill Angela as she is brought into the world of WildStorm.

This book will re-introduce us to fan favorites, Grifter, Voodoo, The Engineer and Zealot.

Where the initial WildC.A.T.S books were flashy with the alien/supernatural entities of the Daemonites taking center stage; this book is far more gritty as would be expected from a Warren Ellis penned book. The panels with Zealot calling in a clean up crew from a bloody bathroom interrogation sets the tone for what is to come.

Ellis is one of the best at creating alternative storylines and universes for established comic book characters. He does this and yet remains true to the characters as they were first presented to the comic book world at large. His take on the WildStorm squad is at once intriguing and entertaining. I look forward to seeing where this book goes!

Was this review helpful?

A fun graphic novel with lots of crime, robots, and intrigue.

Was this review helpful?