Stormwatch is an old Wildstorm comic.  It is revered for many crazy stories and ground breaking ideas.  It seems that this book is attempting that same vibe.

A new #1 is supposed to introduce new readers to the concepts and characters.  And, I think this fails at that miserably.  If you read Stormwatch before you should have no problem picking up what is going on.  If you are new to it, get ready to be confused and befuddled.  Some characters are not even given names or introductions.  They even reference a Superman comic that won’t be out for 3 more weeks after this publication.

While the writing can be confusion as to who is going what and why they are doing it.   It does have some snappy dialogue.  While they don’t tell you what a ‘Century’ Baby is, they do have a great line about being ‘the 18th favorite one.

The art is workman like and moves the story along.  The artist does a good job with expression and sets a good tone.  Although the colorist should be punihed,  the outside shots I understand being dark and muddy, but the indoors ones too?  Not good.

I’m intrigued by the giant horn, and what the Midnighter will end up doing.  C+-  —    Don

Stormwatch is one of the least “new-reader-friendly” books, even though it starts on ground zero without reference to old continuity. It’s the opposite of what I expected, actually – I thought it would help new readers by starting from scratch but that putting it in the same universe as the “mainstream” DCU would hurt it. After all, as awesome as Apollo and the Midnighter are, part of what was interesting about them was that they were Superman and Batman analogues. If they’re in the same world as the actual Superman and Batman, how can they be anything other than second-rate copies?

This book turns that on its ear by setting up an intriguing premise about Apollo (that he might be far more powerful than Superman) but also failing to really establish the feel and context of the book in the overall DCU. Paul Cornell is a fantastic writer, but here it feels like he’s just aping the most obvious qualities of Warren Ellis’s Stormwatch and Authority books. Ellis built an entire mythology off of analogues, “widescreen action,” and economical but loaded dialogue. So far, this book just feels like a watered down version of those great stories.

C —- Ed