Stormwatch #6 – Review

By: Paul Cornell (writer), Miguel Sepulveda (artist), Alex Sinclair & Pete Pantazis (colorists)

The Story: Just ‘cause you’re dying in space doesn’t mean you can’t get a little flirting on!

The Review: Ahh…nothing like a bunch of creative shake-ups to get the emotions flowing, huh?  By now, DC’s first wave of cancellations, replacements, and switcheroos is old news, but I’m sure the heated and anxious talk about it will go on even after the actual changes take place.  For the most part, I think DC made wise decisions across the board about what goes and what stays and who gets on or gets off which title.

Of all these, Cornell’s departure from Stormwatch signals much uncertainty for this title’s fate.  I don’t know if his leaving was a choice he made or one made for him, but whatever the case, it doesn’t bode well.  No offense to his replacement, Paul Jenkins, but after reading his largely pedestrian material on DC Universe Presents, I don’t have much confidence he has what it takes to follow in Cornell’s distinctive footsteps.

Over the course of a half-dozen issues, Cornell has established a very specific style and tone to Stormwatch, a potent mixture of lofty, breezy, and erudite which, you might imagine, very few writers can pull off.  Then there’s the sheer brilliance of his imagination.  Suppose someone other than Cornell—Jenkins, perhaps—had launched this title.  Would he have conceived of an alien city-space station hidden in Earth’s hyperspace, or a man for whom lying is a superpower, or moons that threaten planets with outstretched claws?  I tend to doubt it.

Very few other writers could have handled the developing attraction between Apollo and Midnighter with the respect and taste it needs to be taken seriously.  Too easily do people get caught up in the sensationalism or political implications of such a relationship.  Cornell shrugs all that off, letting the spark between the two heroes smolder until it finally comes out (so to speak) at a very sensible point, though “God, you’re hot” does throw subtlety out the window.

Stormwatch #5 – Review

By: Paul Cornell (writer), Miguel Sepulveda (artist), Allen Passalaqua (colorist)

The Story: You won’t believe what a liar he can be.

The Review: Sooner or later, Cornell had to address one of Stormwatch’s pet conceits: the premise that it’s been around since time immemorial, protecting Earth from all manner of threats from beyond the planet itself, resourced and funded by a mysterious, all-knowing group.  If Cornell really wants to sell this to us, he has to make the folks behind Stormwatch as impressive as he rumors them to be, otherwise Stormwatch as a whole loses credibility.

You see, the team itself is so chock-full of strong, take-no-nonsense personalities that whoever calls the shots on them has to be pretty powerful, both in ability and manner, to be taken seriously.  So it makes perfect sense when from out of nowhere, a supposed Cabinet man arrives, takes the team to task, and reorganizes them within the span of a few pages, with nary a care to their protests.

He doesn’t throw his weight around with just words, however.  Though we only get a glimpse of him in action, he seems capable of performing physics-bending feats almost negligently (“Let’s see, do I remember–?  Death pit, death pit…”), as when he sentences Adam One to death.  Don’t worry—as it turns out, death in the Stormwatch world is considered a kind of promotional stepping stone, a fact which tells you quite a lot about the exact nature of the Shadow Cabinet.

In assigning new leadership to the team, the Cabinet man spends some time musing over each member’s background.  While most of this is an annoying summation of everyone’s powers and abilities, which we’re pretty well-acquainted with by now, we do get some novel bits of info, some more useful (“[Jenny Quantum’s] father is a high-ranking military man, who still thinks she was murdered by terrorists.”) than others (“[Jack Hawksmoor] has sex with wells.”).

The most brilliant twist in the issue is the choice of who will ultimately be Stormwatch’s new leader: spoiler alert—Projectionist.  There’s poetry in this development for a lot of reasons.  Since #1, she’s bemoaned how no one appreciates her, and how all she wants is recognition, which may explain her rather dramatic past (“…there was the life of crime, the suicide attempts, the murders—”).  Now that she has all the attention she can hope for, it’s entertaining to see her overwhelmed in her new position (“…an emergency?!  Already?!”).  Great choice.

Stormwatch #3 – Review

By: Paul Cornell (writer), Miguel Sepulveda (artist), Alex Sinclair & Pete Pantazis (colorists)

The Story: Cloudy, with a chance of meteors that may devastate the planet.  Bundle up!

The Review: Whenever you have a band of super-powered individuals banding together to fight evil, comparisons to the Justice League are inevitable.  Since the League is universally regarded as the primo superhero team in the DCU, and often includes the most recognizable icons, every other team has to not only distinguish its mission statement, but its members as well.  It’s a challenge, all right: how do you beat characters like Superman or Batman?

Stormwatch doesn’t make it easier on itself with such obvious analogues to the World’s Finest in Apollo and Midnighter.  This issue has Apollo flying into space, where direct exposure to the solar radiation that fuels him puts him into overdrive mode.  Good thing, since he does the heavy lifting, destroying a massive asteroid singlehandedly.  Meanwhile, Midnighter has to get over his loner methods to work with a whole gaggle of extraordinarily empowered people, and he feels out of place fighting space creatures when the only thing he can really bring to the table is his tactical mind (“I know how to kill anything.”).  Sound familiar?

That said, we also get plenty of evidence Stormwatch is nothing like the League, especially where power sets are concerned.  Here, you finally get a better understanding of how some of the team’s more bizarre gifts work, like Jack Hawksmoor’s.  As it turns out, when he says he talks to cities, it means he literally sits down among them—elegant Paris, modern It-girl Metropolis, and demonic, rambling Gotham—and has a pleasant chat (“Paris sends her love.”).

Stormwatch #2 – Review

By: Paul Cornell (writer), Miguel Sepulveda & Al Barrionuevo (artists), Alex Sinclair (colorist)

The Story: I’m guessing none of these people played “Follow the Leader” very well as kids.

The Review: Paul Cornell has certainly set aside for himself a quirky territory in the world of comics.  Almost everything he writes has a sincerely strange flavor, but one that can also be strangely sincere.  Whether you’re dealing with Skrulls disguised as the Beatles, a bar where heroes and villains of varying quality rub shoulders and share a hot toddy, or a genius with a fetching robot companion, you can always count on Cornell to deliver the very odd goods.

It doesn’t get much odder than opening on the beginning of all beginnings, the Big Bang, and finding a member of Stormwatch already there.  Adam One appears as befuddled to discover himself in existence as we are, as well as a bit disgruntled at his craving for a “pint,” though “pints” haven’t been invented yet.  An off-panel voice observes, “Ah, so this is the moment you age backwards from the start of the universe!  One day you’re going to try to kill me.”

Cut to a little over a dozen billion years later, and we find Harry looking quite dapper in his middle ages (relatively), but also harried from the multiple demands of his team.  Any group that gathers for a higher calling rather than kinship will have its conflicts, and Stormwatch has plenty, with Engineer brazenly vying for leadership, and Harry Tanner referring to his team in quotes.

Harry becomes increasingly compelling over the course of the issue.  In comparison to the more expansive abilities of his teammates (Jenny Quantum: “Hey, I can do force fields!”  Engineer: “Yes, your dark matter DNA means you can do anything at the moment.”), he doesn’t come off as the most valuable Stormwatcher.  But as Engineer perceptively remarks, “…he’s the greatest at misdirection.  That’s his main power—he’s the prince of lies.”  And so it seems, as he pulls the wool over even the big giant eye of the lunar monster who’s got its tentacles inside his brain.

Stormwatch #1 – Review

By: Paul Cornell (writer), Miguel Sepulveda (artist), Allen Passalaqua (colorist)

The Story: Call me superstitious, but that moon gives me the creeps.

The Review: In one of my reviews for S.H.I.E.L.D., I spoke about the appeal of secret societies, the shadowy group of specially selected individuals who watch over us from afar and chuckle at our ignorance.  It seems DC wants its new universe to have an ancient, secret league of heroes right from the get-go, and so we have Stormwatch, one of many Wildstorm properties the publisher assumed a while back and only just now has found a use for.

Stormwatch certainly has the right makeup to handle the job of being DC’s premier team of unknown worldly guardians.  Here’s a sample: the Engineer, a lady-android with a sarcastic streak; Jack Hawksmoor, controller of cities; Projectionist, mistress media manipulator; and Jenny Quantum, the spirit of the twenty-first century—whatever that means.  That’s before we get to Apollo and Midnighter (Superman and Batman analogues), and good ol’ Martian Manhunter, who rocks a much more aggressive manner than the Zen psychic we’re used to.

But an interesting mix of characters and powers does not a great comic make.  For that, you’ll need a writer who can craft plots capable of actually challenging such a formidable set of beings, and what better man to do so than Cornell?  Anyone who read his run on Action Comics (prior to Reign of the Doomsdays, it goes without saying) knows this man can definitely whip up some serious sci-fi action in epic, mind-bending fashion.

And right from the first page, he puts our team in over their heads.  Somehow, they get spread so thin that Harry Tanner, master swordsman (“I can slice cold fusion from the air, cut my signature on a retina.”), winds up having to fend against the entire living surface of the moon by himself.  If that’s the kind of thing I can expect from this title on a monthly basis, consider me onboard.

Then you discover that whatever massive scourge is about to descend upon the planet, it’s not actually the foe we have to worry about.  This creature itself has fled from an even more knee-shaking entity, and its sole mission now is to prepare other worlds for the inevitable doom to follow.  Don’t hold out hope that it intends to do so with a gentle hand, though.  You don’t write in a giant, intelligent, matter-animating eyeball just to let it hide in the moon.