Wildcats #1
Writer: Grant Morrison
Artists: Jim Lee & Scott Williams
Company: Wildstorm
It’s never a good sign when the flagship book of your line-wide relaunch ships a month late, and certainly the weakness of the opening books like Gen 13 and Wetworks hasn’t done the Wildstorm relaunch any favors. A shame that Wildcats #1 didn’t ship first, as it might have done much better in putting a strong foot forward for Wildstorm. The book is a lot of fun, taking some of the intelligent mature readers superhero work that Joe Casey did, adding in some of Morrison’s trademark crazy ideas and layering it with traditional superhero icing in the form of Jim Lee’s artwork. Wildcats #1 attempts to bridge the gap between the excellent (but low-selling) Wildcats 2.0 and 3.0 and the mediocre (but top-selling) original, and for the most part, it succeeds.
In many ways, Wildcats #1 is like a hundred other revamp number ones we’ve seen before. The team members have drifted apart, found new purposes in life, the world has moved on, and then something (or a series of somethings) reinvigorates their heroic destinies. It’s an old saw, but it can be effective in the right hands, and Morrison wrings a certain amount of entertainment value out of the washed up gunslinger Grifter and a beleagured Central American village, the fling between ex-lovers Spartan and Voodoo amidst his multi-trillion dollar company and an alliance between a pair of powerful foes. Any superhero reader worth his or her salt can see it coming a mile away, but it’s still entertaining reading, and Morrison throws a few winks and nods to the fans in the form of meta-commentary about adult superheroes or the adolescent vulgarity of “widescreen battles.”
Something that Joe Casey did with the Wildcats was to evolve them from their origins as X-Men knockoffs into more interesting characters. Morrison continues that evolution, as the characters have reached very different roles in this new world. Grifter has sunk down into the gutters, but Spartan has become a near-demigod with Bill Gates/Steve Jobs level of technological and corporate influence, and Voodoo brags that she can make immense money dancing for billionaires and oil sheikhs. Morrison does a nice job of continuing the “superhero as hedonist” model that Ellis and Millar perfected with The Authority, blending it with the corporate/fight the power ethos of Wildcats 3.0 and throwing in a bit of old school with Spartan talking about putting together a “superhuman covert action team.”
I’ve never been a huge fan of Jim Lee, but even I will admit he’s a solid artist, and he’s a big draw to the thousands of folks who never would have given Wildcats 3.0, with its unusual design sense and talking heads style, a second look. Lee is weaker on the character-based moments, but when it comes to the closing sequences in the book, the reintroduction of Kaizen Gamorra and the Daemonites, Zealot and Majestic, he delivers on the flashy superhero action.
The body types he draws are either squished-abdomen, massive boobed women or hulking, impossibly muscled men, which is kind of boring and maybe even a little unimaginative, but in this context, it works reasonably well enough. In addition, I do have to give credit to Lee in terms of putting effort and detail into his backgrounds, as best seen in the pages with Grifter and the village in the backdrop. Old school fans of Jim Lee’s WildC.A.T.s will be pleased to see him return to the characters, alongside original inker Scott Williams and talented colorist Alex Sinclair.
Wildcats #1 is off to a good start, a superhero action book with some smarts thanks to Morrison’s wild ideas and Casey’s injection of intelligence into the book during his tenure. The only problem the book faces, and it might be an insurmountable one, is that it’s almost certainly going to be bi-monthly at best, and I’m not sure it’s exciting enough to warrant that kind of a wait.
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i was really skeptical about picking up this book but due to the reviews and feedback that i’ve been reading lately, it seems that it’ll be worth reading. i was really never that familiar with the wildcats or the wildstorm universe but i guess now would be a great time.
20 Oct 2006 at 4:15 am
QuoteCautiously optimistic. That’s how I’ve been approching the whole relaunch and this book in paticular. I will definately be picking up this issue but as the last line of Randy’s review states; bi-monthly. Not to sure I can hang on to the series for very long with a schedule like that. If I do fall off, I’ll still probably get the trade if one appears.
20 Oct 2006 at 1:22 pm
QuoteYou don’t really need to be familiar with the Wildstorm “Universe” to read any of their titles. Every relaunch, and boy do they like to relaunch, is completely different from the last. In some ways, it makes things a little interesting but it requires big name creators to pull it off and can be intimidating to new readers who might feel like they won’t understand what’s going on, as if any of us do.
20 Oct 2006 at 1:57 pm
QuoteMy top 5 (in no order):
• Darwyn Cooke. An incredible blend of classic Saturday morning cartoon mixed in with the action of John Buscema. I love everything and anything he puts out. His style of Wonder Woman is the greatest of all time.
• Michael Lark. He had me hooked with Gotham Central and I’ve been a fan since. He brings to his books that perfect amount of grittiness needed to actually pull you into the storyline.
• Carlos Pacheco. He needs to be on Fantastic Four and be on it forever. Man, his stuff is always so much fun and breathtaking.
• Steve McNiven. This dude has made Civil War one visual fucking roller coaster ride. Yeah, it was late… but it was worth the time. Just blows me away.
• Eric Powell. Not enough space on the internet to contain my love for this man’s art. I can look at it for hours and never get bored. LOVED his monster covers he did for Marvel.
20 Oct 2006 at 5:37 pm
QuoteI’m a dork. Wrong post.
20 Oct 2006 at 8:43 pm
QuoteI didn’t find this to be much to my liking. I’m usually a fan of Lee’s artwork but it didn’t really do anything for me here. Morrison’s writing is decent enough but something just didn’t click. It’s possible I’m still not over the fact that this book should have been out..what a month ago? six months? I’ve lost count. I’ll give the second issue a try but this first issue left me unfulfilled.
22 Oct 2006 at 5:51 pm
Quotesame here amigo, the book just didnt give me the right “hook” on this, it seems unfulfilled for me also. i guess im gonna drop this title from my list. i’ll wait for the trade IF the book turns out to be great.
22 Oct 2006 at 10:03 pm
QuoteWow. Just saw a retailer announcement that Wildcats #2 has been cancelled for resolicitation… for shipment in March 2007.
5 months. At best. If my somewhat positive review of issue one inspired anyone to buy this, I’m sorry… I very much doubt the series has legs, if we’re not even going to see the second issue for five months, probably more like six. You can’t build momentum that way, and this wasn’t knock-you-out fantastic, which is the only way I can see hanging on for that long waiting for the next issue. When #2 comes out, I very much doubt I’ll even read it at that point.
24 Oct 2006 at 6:36 pm
QuoteBig shocker that is. Aint no way I’m picking another issue of that up. I don’t wanna tell Jim Lee what to do but..ok well maybe I do and will. I think he should stick to his Wildstorm duties or just become a full time artist again. Numbers of his loyal fans will pick it up just because. I however who love his work am not intrested in seeing constant delays. If you can’t deliver the goods like you should on time..stop adding more and more work onto your already full plate when you can’t even get an issue out of something that should have been out X months ago.
25 Oct 2006 at 11:24 pm
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