The Wild Storm #11 – Warren Ellis, Writer; Jon Davis-Hunt, Artist; Steve Buccellato, Colorist
Ratings:
Ray – 7/10
As always, almost a year into this title, The Wild Storm #11 continues to be a lot of set-up in search of a showdown. Every issue tends to consist of characters in their respective hideouts, talking about their plans for attacking the other side. The battle between Skywatch and IO seems to be coming to a head, such as it is, as the respective leaders are making plans for sneak attacks and discussing worst-case scenarios. Characters appear for a few pages, such as the Doctor and Jenny, who seem to have quickly formed a connection, but then they’re gone. Others, like Michael Cray (whose spin-off is so much better than this book) have just disappeared. Despite being the closest thing to the good guys in the title, IO has the weaker segment, as they mainly spend their pages having technical discussions about how to attack Skywatch.
Skywatch, though, and their sinister leader Henry Bendix in particular, are more compelling. Bendix has been here before, and his segment involves a seven-page black-and-white segment depicting a past battle between Skywatch and the Soviet Union, fought using old-school UFOs and cold-war era technology. This segment looks amazing, and is probably the best segment in the series so far – but it’s also mostly useless in terms of advancing the overall narrative. Then there’s a showdown between Grifter and Zealot, two characters who have been in this series since the beginning but haven’t really gotten to do much beyond a few action segments. A slow-burn conspiracy thriller is all well and good, but once we’re a year in and key characters have barely met, it’s a problem. Do we really need four pages of Engineer armoring up?
To find reviews of all the DC issues, visit DC This Week.
Disclaimer: GeekDad received this comic for review purposes.
