Chaotic Wooster
a fire made of rats
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Since DC is publishing a new WildC.A.T.S, I had the urge to re-read the original. And since you really don't see much about Wildstorm these days, I thought I'd give it a sort of retrospective review.
WildC.A.T.S Covert Action Teams (Volume One, Issues #0-4)
Released between August '92 and March '93, with the #0 issue confusingly released in June '93. This four part story marks the start of the Wildstorm Universe (by publication date, not chronology) and was one of the early Image Comics titles (alongside Spawn, Youngblood, etc.).
It is also rife with the worst excesses of it's decade, if not to the extent of Rob Liefeld's books. I'll say upfront, the first WildC.A.T.S story is a badly written and derivitive mess! It suggests none of the intrigue and excellence to come, and stands purely on the strength of it's art and the bubbling enthusiasm of those involved.
Issue #1 starts confusingly, with a flashback to the discovery of a mysterious orb in the wreckage of a Soviet space station that's crashed in Antarctica. The scientists who discover it are momentarity interrupted by a woman teleporting in with a cryptic warning, then vanishing.
Next, we see a flashforward, the aftermath of an explosion being discussed by two intelligence operatives. They're blaming C.A.T.S (rogue superhuman teams) for the destruction, declaring there to be no survivors. The mystery woman warps in again for a moment, lamenting her failure, then she's gone again.
-
The mystery woman is Void (real name Adrianna Tereshkova), she was a cosmonaut on Mir, and she died when it crashed. Only, she didn't. The strange orb kept her mentally intact and she recreated a humanoid body from it's energy. She has a wide range of powers, chiefly teleportation and energy control, as well as rockin' a sexy Silver Surfer look. She's a team mainstay for almost all of volume one.
-
Onto the present... Almost. We see a a homeless dwarf get mugged for sleeping in the wrong alley. He momentarily stuns his attackers with a burst of energy that shocks him as much as them, but it's not enough to prevent the attack, which includes a nasty off-panel stabbing. Void teleports in (again!) and saves the man, named Jacob Marlowe. Offering to change his life forever...
Then we finally get to the actual present (August '92, anyway) and Marlowe wakes up in another alley, stumbles through traffic, and into the ground floor of a skyscraper. By the time he's reached the penthouse floor, his staff have him shaved and cleaned up and looking like a million dollars. He's worth billions. Void's powers to see into the past and future, while vague, were enough to raise a fortune in only two years. Marlowe's Halo Corporation is a big success, apparently.
-
Jacob Marlowe is Emp, or Lord Emp. Actually he's had a bunch of names over the millennia, he's just forgotten most of them. He's an alien, he's been here a long time. He's materialistic, lecherous, sarcastic and doesn't have much faith in Void's visions despite the riches they have brought him. Mostly because he doesn't think he's anything special and can't see himself as a hero. Emp is a major player through volume one.
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Void warns Emp that her visions warn that whatever crisis is to come will be soon. They review their preperations. They've got a snazzy jet, woo. They've also got Spartan, a human-looking super-robot!
-
Spartan was very clearly based on Cyclops. He's the team's field leader, he shoots energy, he's not terribly interesting right now. There's lots more to Spartan, especially in later volumes, but right now just know he's a blasty robot guy in a blue and white costume.
-
Spartan talks about how well their two "Gifted Ones" recruits are doing in trainig, only for the pair to come smashing out of the the combat training room (definitely NOT the danger room) and breaking stuff. Emp laments that maybe he could afford some Youngblood (Rob Liefeld's team) instead.
-
The "Gifted Ones" are humans with alien ancestry, in this case MAUL (Jeremy Stone) a scientist who turns in a big dumb hulk. Bigger he gets, the stronger he gets, the dumber he gets. He also turns purple and grows two big horns from his shoulderblades... Not a bad look other than he's got a yellow 'M' on his costume's forehead, which makes it look like he's shilling for McDonalds. Maul is a background player for a long time, but comes into his own in later volumes.
His sparring partner is Warblade (Reno Bryce). He's liquid metal Wolverine! And yet... He's very, very boring. They clearly intended for him to be "cool", in the way Wolverine was deemed cool in the 90's. But his look is too busy, and his only goal is vengeance, and his background is really inconstent (even before the WSU splits off from the rest of Image). Honestly, he'll never really matter... Though he did get two solo mini-series.
-
Alright, now we meet the villains. The Cabal. They've got a giant high-tech submarine, with a fancy dining room. Sweet! The Cabal is made up of human ne'erdowells and led by Helspont. He's a demonic-looking, flame headed alien. He proves his zero-tolerence policy for bullshit by having his henchman (another gifted one called Pike) murder a guy by drowning him in his dinner. The foolish fellow has sold out the Cabal and now he's dead.
Alongside Pike, Helspont's got a Coda assassin (imagine if Wonder Woman's Amazons were all sexy ninjas) called Devin and a creepy girl called Providence who shares Void's powers.
They talk about Helspont's master plan of "Reunification" and of the gifted one who poses the greatest threat to it, one with "The Sight".
-
The Cabal... Are pretty stock villains. Helspont looks awesome. Providence is eerie. But Devin doesn't matter and Pike will wind up mattering a lot more in an entirely different book (Backlash). They're evil. They've got a master plan.
-
Issue #0 sort of fits here. Void dreams and relives the crash that killed her. We also learn that Marlowe's got a sketchy contact with information on another gifted one. Yep, the same one Helspont's after. We also see Spartan, Maul and Warblade in the training simulator again, this time not goofing it up... Until Warblade snaps at Maul and gets pounded into the floor by the suddenly giant brute. Oops.
We witness the Cabal turncoat's betrayal, trading the information Marlowe's sketchy contact, another dwarf called... Ahem, The Gnome. He's got a Coda assassin working for him too. This meeting is interrupted by the arrival of Zealot and Grifter.
-
Zealot (real name Zannah) is yet-another Coda assassin... Actually, she's THE Coda assassin. She's an alien, same species as Emp, only from a warrior caste. She came to Earth with him and started up her own cult of assassins, using human women. But now they all hate her for reasons. Grifter (real name Cole Cash) is a looot of things and actually turned out to be the breakout character of the book. For now, just know he's a gunslinger and was trained by Zealot despite being a bloke. They were a thing, but now they're not.
Zealot's look is... Almost good. She wears a costume that rides so far up her arse I'm surprised she's not cut in half, but otherwise isn't bad. Grifter's got a cool mask and a trenchcoat. Can't go wrong with a trenchcoat.
-
Grifter and Zealot fight The Gnome's assorted superhuman henchmen. Zealot throws Grifter out of the fight so he can go find the gifted one while she fights The Gnome's forces alone like the crazy bitch that she is. Coda are like that... Especially Zealot.
-
So we finally have everyone converging at the same location... A downtown strip club. Because this has aged well...
The gifted one (our last character for a while, I promise) is Voodoo (stripper name, real name is Priscilla Kitaen). She mesmerizes the crowd, but Grifter sees some guys in trenchcoats, so he knows it's going to kick off. Voodoo sees them for what they really are... Demons! Or rather, Daemonites, the aliens that make up much of the Cabal and possess humans to walk among us.
They try to snatch Voodoo. Grifter starts shooting. Devin kicks the shit out of him, he blows out her stomach with a derringer... Doesn't really slow her down much. The WildC.A.T.S arrive in glorious fashion and mop up the Cabal's goons. Zealot arrives to save Emp (by throwing a fucking bladedboomering through a guy's skull!) and finally the team is all together. Yay!
Then the still-not-dead-yet Coda sets off a suicide bomb and blows everything up, bringing us back to where issue #1 started.
Oh, and we see than Dan Quayle is also possessed by a Daemonite when he and Helspont are gloating over the WildC.A.T.S. death. Because of course he is.
-
Issue #2 begins in a I.O. facility (I.O. is the big bad intelligence agency of the WSU, very high-tech), where we see that this version of Void teleported the team away just before the explosion, having witnessed it already and reacting just slightly faster. Sadly, their arrival accidentally kills an I.O. psychic, putting the agency on the warpath.
They 'port away, but I.O. tracks them to their safehouse. So as the WildC.A.T.S regroup and explain to Voodoo the world of shit she's stuck in, an I.O. kill team (Black Razors) is dispatched. Voodoo sees Quayle on tv and tells everyone he's an alien!
Meanwhile, Helspont visits a big facility to see the progress on his Reunification project. We discover that one of the scientists who found the orb in Antarctica is a Daemonite too (but seemingly wasn't then). The reunification plan involves using U.S. government and NASA to open a dimensional gate so Helspont's forces can invade. How original.
The Black Razors attack! And they wipe the floor with all the rookie WildC.A.T.S, with only Grifter and Zealot able to hold their own. Things look bleak.
Only The I.O. spook we've been seeing (like Clint Eastwood with a scarred up face and a glass eye) knows both Grifter AND Emp. The fight ends, and Lynch (the spymaster) reveals he knows something about the infiltration of the government, about the secret project, but he can't act against it. So he directs the WildC.A.T.S to Helspont's facility, and all of a sudden we're heading towards the final act!
We get to laugh at Daemonite-Quayle punking out Pike for his lackey status, then the WildC.A.T.S attack! Half the team having been sent to confront Quayle so Voodoo can exorcise the Daemonite from him...
Then Rob Liefeld shows up. I mean, Rob Liefeld's team, Youngblood, shows up. Yep, we're not done with the Wild.C.A.T.S first story and we've got a whole other team from another title to deal with... Sigh. Actually, we've had a few name-drops of other Image characters throughout, but the entire third issue is pretty much WildC.A.T.S versus Youngblood.
Who are Youngblood? It doesn't matter. They're a redesign of the Teen Titans from Rob Liefeld's aborted pitch to work on that title. Essentially, they're super-hero celebrities, fully in league with the U.S. government. Rob was actually on the ball with this idea. But it's still Image-era Liefeld... So guns, pouches, awful names, terrible dialogue, insane muscles, you know the drill.
-
By the start of issue #3, only Maul is left standing (getting bigger and more mindless all the time) and the Youngblood heavy-hitters finally drop him.
We see the other half of the WildC.A.T.S are still infiltrating the facility, intent on shutting the whole thing down before Helspont can open his end-of-the-world gateway. But so is The Gnome and his minions. See, he wants the orb... It destroyed the Mir, it created Void and Providence, it's powering the gate, and he wants it. It's precious to him, gollum-gollum!
Youngblood finally wake up to Quayle being evil (when he shoots their leader in the head... they're not bright) and Voodoo is able to drives the Daemonite out of him. Too late though, the gate is open and Helspont is doing his villain laugh.
-
Issue #4 sees the entirety of Youngblood take on Helspont. He laughs at them and dismantles them in a couple of panels. See, he's a veeery powerful Daemonite lord possessing a veeery powerful alien body. No-one here is on his level.
Marlowe activates the wreckage of Spartan, and our brave robot blows himself up to take out the facility power. Warblade goes full berserker on Helspont, actually landing a few hits before being reminded that you don't bring claws to a cosmic energy fight.
Helspont flees to the chamber holding the orb, since with it he can destroy all the heroes and concoct some new plan to conquer Earth. The WildC.A.T.S follow...
Only to find that The Gnome has taken the orb. He blasts Helspont (seemingly killing him) and sets his minions onto the team. More panels of action ensue. When The Gnome attempts to escape, Emp confronts him and confirms his "not a hero" status by shooting Gnomes' arm off, so he drops the orb and follows it down into the depths of the facility. Everything blows up!
Later...
Searching the debris, Youngblood find Spartan's robo-corpse and wonder about the rest, guessing they must've survived somehow. Youngblood unaware that Void, once again, teleported the team to safety.
The WildC.A.T.S fly away, with Voodoo lamenting Spartan's death, only to be shown they're already downloading his memories into a new body.
The day is saved, the team is now assembled, Helspont and the Gnome are both (falsely presumed) dead and Dan Quayle is exposed as an alien in the newspapers.
-
Wildcats #0-4 is a mess. Too many characters to introduce, especially when an entire issue is pretty much devoted to Youngblood! The flashback/flashfoward stuff confuses matters and the Gnome is entirely redundent, might as well have have the Cabal traitor just pass on secrets to Emp and drop the Gnome entirely.
But... But...
I still sort of love these dawn-of-Image era comics. The enthusiasm for what the group was doing is right there on the page. Jim Lee's art IS goddamn amazing, and the pages can barely contain everything he's squeezing into them.
The real weakness is Brandon Choi as a writer. Now, he did actually come up with a very internally consistent identity for the WSU's early years (ignoring the intrusions by other Image characters), with interwoven backstories and a compelling history to it. He laid a strong groundwork for what had come before and was to come. But... His issue-by-issue plotting, dialogue and characterization are all pretty bad.
Fascinating to me is the persistent religious elements. Emp and Zealot are Kherubim (later called Kherans), aliens mistaken for angels. Emp's company is Halo. Helspont and the Daemonites... Even the issue titles... Revelations, Resurrection Day, etc. And it continued through Choi's other Wildstorm books too. Deathblow's storyline is completely overtaken with religious themes and characters. Gen 13 began with Project: Genesis, etc. Odd.
But there it is, Wild.C.A.T.S taking it's baby steps. The Wildstorm Universe's first storyline. Certainly not it's finest.
Anyone want to read about another? Maybe something more coherent (or less?). Thanks to some nostalgic collecting, I've got most of the Wildstorm books, and I'm still filling in the gaps.
WildC.A.T.S Covert Action Teams (Volume One, Issues #0-4)
Released between August '92 and March '93, with the #0 issue confusingly released in June '93. This four part story marks the start of the Wildstorm Universe (by publication date, not chronology) and was one of the early Image Comics titles (alongside Spawn, Youngblood, etc.).
It is also rife with the worst excesses of it's decade, if not to the extent of Rob Liefeld's books. I'll say upfront, the first WildC.A.T.S story is a badly written and derivitive mess! It suggests none of the intrigue and excellence to come, and stands purely on the strength of it's art and the bubbling enthusiasm of those involved.
Issue #1 starts confusingly, with a flashback to the discovery of a mysterious orb in the wreckage of a Soviet space station that's crashed in Antarctica. The scientists who discover it are momentarity interrupted by a woman teleporting in with a cryptic warning, then vanishing.
Next, we see a flashforward, the aftermath of an explosion being discussed by two intelligence operatives. They're blaming C.A.T.S (rogue superhuman teams) for the destruction, declaring there to be no survivors. The mystery woman warps in again for a moment, lamenting her failure, then she's gone again.
-
The mystery woman is Void (real name Adrianna Tereshkova), she was a cosmonaut on Mir, and she died when it crashed. Only, she didn't. The strange orb kept her mentally intact and she recreated a humanoid body from it's energy. She has a wide range of powers, chiefly teleportation and energy control, as well as rockin' a sexy Silver Surfer look. She's a team mainstay for almost all of volume one.
-
Onto the present... Almost. We see a a homeless dwarf get mugged for sleeping in the wrong alley. He momentarily stuns his attackers with a burst of energy that shocks him as much as them, but it's not enough to prevent the attack, which includes a nasty off-panel stabbing. Void teleports in (again!) and saves the man, named Jacob Marlowe. Offering to change his life forever...
Then we finally get to the actual present (August '92, anyway) and Marlowe wakes up in another alley, stumbles through traffic, and into the ground floor of a skyscraper. By the time he's reached the penthouse floor, his staff have him shaved and cleaned up and looking like a million dollars. He's worth billions. Void's powers to see into the past and future, while vague, were enough to raise a fortune in only two years. Marlowe's Halo Corporation is a big success, apparently.
-
Jacob Marlowe is Emp, or Lord Emp. Actually he's had a bunch of names over the millennia, he's just forgotten most of them. He's an alien, he's been here a long time. He's materialistic, lecherous, sarcastic and doesn't have much faith in Void's visions despite the riches they have brought him. Mostly because he doesn't think he's anything special and can't see himself as a hero. Emp is a major player through volume one.
-
Void warns Emp that her visions warn that whatever crisis is to come will be soon. They review their preperations. They've got a snazzy jet, woo. They've also got Spartan, a human-looking super-robot!
-
Spartan was very clearly based on Cyclops. He's the team's field leader, he shoots energy, he's not terribly interesting right now. There's lots more to Spartan, especially in later volumes, but right now just know he's a blasty robot guy in a blue and white costume.
-
Spartan talks about how well their two "Gifted Ones" recruits are doing in trainig, only for the pair to come smashing out of the the combat training room (definitely NOT the danger room) and breaking stuff. Emp laments that maybe he could afford some Youngblood (Rob Liefeld's team) instead.
-
The "Gifted Ones" are humans with alien ancestry, in this case MAUL (Jeremy Stone) a scientist who turns in a big dumb hulk. Bigger he gets, the stronger he gets, the dumber he gets. He also turns purple and grows two big horns from his shoulderblades... Not a bad look other than he's got a yellow 'M' on his costume's forehead, which makes it look like he's shilling for McDonalds. Maul is a background player for a long time, but comes into his own in later volumes.
His sparring partner is Warblade (Reno Bryce). He's liquid metal Wolverine! And yet... He's very, very boring. They clearly intended for him to be "cool", in the way Wolverine was deemed cool in the 90's. But his look is too busy, and his only goal is vengeance, and his background is really inconstent (even before the WSU splits off from the rest of Image). Honestly, he'll never really matter... Though he did get two solo mini-series.
-
Alright, now we meet the villains. The Cabal. They've got a giant high-tech submarine, with a fancy dining room. Sweet! The Cabal is made up of human ne'erdowells and led by Helspont. He's a demonic-looking, flame headed alien. He proves his zero-tolerence policy for bullshit by having his henchman (another gifted one called Pike) murder a guy by drowning him in his dinner. The foolish fellow has sold out the Cabal and now he's dead.
Alongside Pike, Helspont's got a Coda assassin (imagine if Wonder Woman's Amazons were all sexy ninjas) called Devin and a creepy girl called Providence who shares Void's powers.
They talk about Helspont's master plan of "Reunification" and of the gifted one who poses the greatest threat to it, one with "The Sight".
-
The Cabal... Are pretty stock villains. Helspont looks awesome. Providence is eerie. But Devin doesn't matter and Pike will wind up mattering a lot more in an entirely different book (Backlash). They're evil. They've got a master plan.
-
Issue #0 sort of fits here. Void dreams and relives the crash that killed her. We also learn that Marlowe's got a sketchy contact with information on another gifted one. Yep, the same one Helspont's after. We also see Spartan, Maul and Warblade in the training simulator again, this time not goofing it up... Until Warblade snaps at Maul and gets pounded into the floor by the suddenly giant brute. Oops.
We witness the Cabal turncoat's betrayal, trading the information Marlowe's sketchy contact, another dwarf called... Ahem, The Gnome. He's got a Coda assassin working for him too. This meeting is interrupted by the arrival of Zealot and Grifter.
-
Zealot (real name Zannah) is yet-another Coda assassin... Actually, she's THE Coda assassin. She's an alien, same species as Emp, only from a warrior caste. She came to Earth with him and started up her own cult of assassins, using human women. But now they all hate her for reasons. Grifter (real name Cole Cash) is a looot of things and actually turned out to be the breakout character of the book. For now, just know he's a gunslinger and was trained by Zealot despite being a bloke. They were a thing, but now they're not.
Zealot's look is... Almost good. She wears a costume that rides so far up her arse I'm surprised she's not cut in half, but otherwise isn't bad. Grifter's got a cool mask and a trenchcoat. Can't go wrong with a trenchcoat.
-
Grifter and Zealot fight The Gnome's assorted superhuman henchmen. Zealot throws Grifter out of the fight so he can go find the gifted one while she fights The Gnome's forces alone like the crazy bitch that she is. Coda are like that... Especially Zealot.
-
So we finally have everyone converging at the same location... A downtown strip club. Because this has aged well...
The gifted one (our last character for a while, I promise) is Voodoo (stripper name, real name is Priscilla Kitaen). She mesmerizes the crowd, but Grifter sees some guys in trenchcoats, so he knows it's going to kick off. Voodoo sees them for what they really are... Demons! Or rather, Daemonites, the aliens that make up much of the Cabal and possess humans to walk among us.
They try to snatch Voodoo. Grifter starts shooting. Devin kicks the shit out of him, he blows out her stomach with a derringer... Doesn't really slow her down much. The WildC.A.T.S arrive in glorious fashion and mop up the Cabal's goons. Zealot arrives to save Emp (by throwing a fucking bladedboomering through a guy's skull!) and finally the team is all together. Yay!
Then the still-not-dead-yet Coda sets off a suicide bomb and blows everything up, bringing us back to where issue #1 started.
Oh, and we see than Dan Quayle is also possessed by a Daemonite when he and Helspont are gloating over the WildC.A.T.S. death. Because of course he is.
-
Issue #2 begins in a I.O. facility (I.O. is the big bad intelligence agency of the WSU, very high-tech), where we see that this version of Void teleported the team away just before the explosion, having witnessed it already and reacting just slightly faster. Sadly, their arrival accidentally kills an I.O. psychic, putting the agency on the warpath.
They 'port away, but I.O. tracks them to their safehouse. So as the WildC.A.T.S regroup and explain to Voodoo the world of shit she's stuck in, an I.O. kill team (Black Razors) is dispatched. Voodoo sees Quayle on tv and tells everyone he's an alien!
Meanwhile, Helspont visits a big facility to see the progress on his Reunification project. We discover that one of the scientists who found the orb in Antarctica is a Daemonite too (but seemingly wasn't then). The reunification plan involves using U.S. government and NASA to open a dimensional gate so Helspont's forces can invade. How original.
The Black Razors attack! And they wipe the floor with all the rookie WildC.A.T.S, with only Grifter and Zealot able to hold their own. Things look bleak.
Only The I.O. spook we've been seeing (like Clint Eastwood with a scarred up face and a glass eye) knows both Grifter AND Emp. The fight ends, and Lynch (the spymaster) reveals he knows something about the infiltration of the government, about the secret project, but he can't act against it. So he directs the WildC.A.T.S to Helspont's facility, and all of a sudden we're heading towards the final act!
We get to laugh at Daemonite-Quayle punking out Pike for his lackey status, then the WildC.A.T.S attack! Half the team having been sent to confront Quayle so Voodoo can exorcise the Daemonite from him...
Then Rob Liefeld shows up. I mean, Rob Liefeld's team, Youngblood, shows up. Yep, we're not done with the Wild.C.A.T.S first story and we've got a whole other team from another title to deal with... Sigh. Actually, we've had a few name-drops of other Image characters throughout, but the entire third issue is pretty much WildC.A.T.S versus Youngblood.
Who are Youngblood? It doesn't matter. They're a redesign of the Teen Titans from Rob Liefeld's aborted pitch to work on that title. Essentially, they're super-hero celebrities, fully in league with the U.S. government. Rob was actually on the ball with this idea. But it's still Image-era Liefeld... So guns, pouches, awful names, terrible dialogue, insane muscles, you know the drill.
-
By the start of issue #3, only Maul is left standing (getting bigger and more mindless all the time) and the Youngblood heavy-hitters finally drop him.
We see the other half of the WildC.A.T.S are still infiltrating the facility, intent on shutting the whole thing down before Helspont can open his end-of-the-world gateway. But so is The Gnome and his minions. See, he wants the orb... It destroyed the Mir, it created Void and Providence, it's powering the gate, and he wants it. It's precious to him, gollum-gollum!
Youngblood finally wake up to Quayle being evil (when he shoots their leader in the head... they're not bright) and Voodoo is able to drives the Daemonite out of him. Too late though, the gate is open and Helspont is doing his villain laugh.
-
Issue #4 sees the entirety of Youngblood take on Helspont. He laughs at them and dismantles them in a couple of panels. See, he's a veeery powerful Daemonite lord possessing a veeery powerful alien body. No-one here is on his level.
Marlowe activates the wreckage of Spartan, and our brave robot blows himself up to take out the facility power. Warblade goes full berserker on Helspont, actually landing a few hits before being reminded that you don't bring claws to a cosmic energy fight.
Helspont flees to the chamber holding the orb, since with it he can destroy all the heroes and concoct some new plan to conquer Earth. The WildC.A.T.S follow...
Only to find that The Gnome has taken the orb. He blasts Helspont (seemingly killing him) and sets his minions onto the team. More panels of action ensue. When The Gnome attempts to escape, Emp confronts him and confirms his "not a hero" status by shooting Gnomes' arm off, so he drops the orb and follows it down into the depths of the facility. Everything blows up!
Later...
Searching the debris, Youngblood find Spartan's robo-corpse and wonder about the rest, guessing they must've survived somehow. Youngblood unaware that Void, once again, teleported the team to safety.
The WildC.A.T.S fly away, with Voodoo lamenting Spartan's death, only to be shown they're already downloading his memories into a new body.
The day is saved, the team is now assembled, Helspont and the Gnome are both (falsely presumed) dead and Dan Quayle is exposed as an alien in the newspapers.
-
Wildcats #0-4 is a mess. Too many characters to introduce, especially when an entire issue is pretty much devoted to Youngblood! The flashback/flashfoward stuff confuses matters and the Gnome is entirely redundent, might as well have have the Cabal traitor just pass on secrets to Emp and drop the Gnome entirely.
But... But...
I still sort of love these dawn-of-Image era comics. The enthusiasm for what the group was doing is right there on the page. Jim Lee's art IS goddamn amazing, and the pages can barely contain everything he's squeezing into them.
The real weakness is Brandon Choi as a writer. Now, he did actually come up with a very internally consistent identity for the WSU's early years (ignoring the intrusions by other Image characters), with interwoven backstories and a compelling history to it. He laid a strong groundwork for what had come before and was to come. But... His issue-by-issue plotting, dialogue and characterization are all pretty bad.
Fascinating to me is the persistent religious elements. Emp and Zealot are Kherubim (later called Kherans), aliens mistaken for angels. Emp's company is Halo. Helspont and the Daemonites... Even the issue titles... Revelations, Resurrection Day, etc. And it continued through Choi's other Wildstorm books too. Deathblow's storyline is completely overtaken with religious themes and characters. Gen 13 began with Project: Genesis, etc. Odd.
But there it is, Wild.C.A.T.S taking it's baby steps. The Wildstorm Universe's first storyline. Certainly not it's finest.
Anyone want to read about another? Maybe something more coherent (or less?). Thanks to some nostalgic collecting, I've got most of the Wildstorm books, and I'm still filling in the gaps.
