WildCATS #1

Written by Grant Morrison

Pencils & Cover by Jim Lee

 

Each series has so far taken the idea of the Worldstorm in a completely different way. Both GEN13 and Wetworks were not currently being produced before this and yet even they took two different paths—Wetworks acting like nothing at all had changed except time elapsed since the last series while GEN13 is in the process of retelling its original story. The Authority is taking a different tack by rebooting the series with a completely different storyline. And Wildcats, while losing its boring acronym, have started their story a month BEFORE the Worldstorm. It is the only comic that is going to actually explain the Worldstorm itself to new readers.

 

As it stands, this might turn out to be a bad idea because we go the whole issue without ever getting to the present. What we do get is a continuity laden story that introduces most of the Wildcats in their original iterations. Supposedly a large force of evil-doers is amassing to attack Earth, a mix of the evil aliens (which are the usual alien villains of the series) along with human rebels fighting against the new Halo world order that Hadrien is creating. It is interesting, but ultimately has me flabbergasted as to why so much time is being spent when it is all supposed to be rebooted. Just how long do they plan to keep us in the past? A marked contrast between the old and new iterations of the characters is a good idea, helping old and new readers alike. But lingering on events that take place a month before the nine issue mini-series that created the reboot doesn’t, it negates the whole POINT of the reboot: to do away with all the continuity.

 

Along with the odd storytelling come a couple of odd scenes that make the comic all the more unusual. The first is a sex scene between the android Hadrien and Voodoo, but since such a scene can’t be shown without a mature censure placed on the comic, the scene is done entirely in arbitrary colors similar to ‘infra-red’ vision along with ‘blurry sections’ over the naughty bits. It’s quite ingenious and allows us to see the intimacy without the sensationalism.

 

The second oddity is on the second to last page when Grifter throws off his ‘drunk-loser’ routine to kill some of those evil aliens. The whole page’s narration is in German. It is the same style of narration as the rest of the Grifter scenes but through design or mistake, is completely done in German. He isn’t IN Germany in the scene (he’s actually in Latin America somewhere), and the bad guys are aliens, not Nazis. I really am perplexed. It translates to: “Grifter is Confusion! Grifter is Death! Grifter is Confusion! Grifter is Chaos! And Death! And Death! And Death! That is Grifter!” And if ALL that wasn’t enough, they actually misspell the German word for ‘and’. They say ‘unt’ (which isn’t a word at all in German) when they most surely mean ‘und’.

 

It does sound cooler in German but I can’t imagine that that was Morrison’s sole intention if indeed he meant to write it in German. I can’t imagine it was a mistake but just this week Marvel put a huge insert into the middle of a two page splash so I’ll not put anything past comic editors.

 

The issue itself is neither bad nor great—it simply is the introduction issue for the characters and the Wildstorm world in general. An odd debut issue to be sure but Morrison was never one to shy from creating oddities.

 

Rating - 5