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Post by Dizzy D on Jul 23, 2017 4:03:09 GMT -5
Movie poster:
This looks amazingly fun.
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Post by Dizzy D on Jul 21, 2017 6:27:46 GMT -5
Kingdom Hearts 3 looks ridiculous. Here is a trailer featuring the characters from Toy Story. Really excited for this!!! ...okay, that looks pretty cool. I have to admit, this may be unpopular, but as much as I loved the first one, I was thoroughly unimpressed with the second. I remember them dropping the interesting level design for unremarkable bland, linear just open square levels. It was like a checklist of visiting various Disney locations and that's it. I found it very boring. In fairness, it has been a very long time since I played it, so who knows if I would feel the same today. But, yeah, this looks really cool. I got past one of the four major milestones in Dragon Age: Origins and parked that one for a while. I don't think I'm dropping it, just taking a break. It's a pretty big time and energy sink. I scored a good chunk of the Dead Rising games on a Humble Bundle for PC. Specifically, DR 2, the DR 2 release with the original protagonist from the first, and DR3. I played DR 1 and 2 a lot on XBOX 360 back in the day, and they were an absolute blast, cheap bosses aside. Definitely going to have some stupid fun with this one. It's a creative weapon-making, zombie-killing sandbox. Highly recommended if you've never played them. As a big Dragon Age fan: which milestone did you do and which resolution did you pick?
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Post by Dizzy D on Jul 14, 2017 7:12:45 GMT -5
Downside: some of them are in PDF only. Hope my ancient e-reader works well with them.
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Post by Dizzy D on Jul 13, 2017 4:23:11 GMT -5
For those interested, I just bought the Humble Bundle of this week and it includes a massive load of classic comics (they're digital comics, and I know some are not fans of that):
These are the titles included: A Celebration of Will - Charles Brownstien Alter Ego #48 TwoMorrows Publishing Captain Victory & The Galactic Rangers #1 Dynamite Entertainment Captain Victory & The Galactic Rangers #2 Captain Victory & The Galactic Rangers #3 Captain Victory & The Galactic Rangers #4 Captain Victory & The Galactic Rangers #5 Captain Victory & The Galactic Rangers #6 Comic Book Artist Vol. 2 #6 TwoMorrows Publishing Fagin The Jew 10th Anniversary Edition Dark Horse Comics Jack Kirby Checklist Gold Edition TwoMorrows Publishing Jack Kirby Collector #16 TwoMorrows Publishing Jack Kirby Collector #62 TwoMorrows Publishing Jack Kirby Collector #63 TwoMorrows Publishing Kirby Five-Oh! TwoMorrows Publishing Kirby Genesis #0 Dynamite Entertainment Kirby Genesis #1 Kirby Genesis #2 Kirby Genesis #3 Kirby Genesis #4 Kirby Genesis #5 Kirby Genesis #6 Kirby Genesis #7 Kirby Genesis #8 Kirby Unleashed TwoMorrows Publishing Dynamite Entertainment Kirby: Genesis - Captain Victory #2 Kirby: Genesis - Captain Victory #3 Kirby: Genesis - Captain Victory #4 Kirby: Genesis - Captain Victory #5 Kirby: Genesis - Captain Victory #6 Kirby: Genesis - Dragonsbane #1 Kirby: Genesis - Dragonsbane #2 Kirby: Genesis - Dragonsbane #3 Kirby: Genesis - Dragonsbane #4 Kirby: Genesis - Silver Star #1 Kirby: Genesis - Silver Star #2 Kirby: Genesis - Silver Star #3 Kirby: Genesis - Silver Star #4 Kirby: Genesis - Silver Star #5 Kirby: Genesis - Silver Star #6 Last Day in Vietnam: A Memory (2nd edition) Dark Horse Comics Lee & Kirby: The Wonder Years TwoMorrows Publishing Silver Star Image Comics Silver Star: Graphite Edition TwoMorrows Publishing Supermen! The First Wave of Comic Book Heroes 1936-1941 Fantagraphics The Secret History of Marvel Comics: Jack Kirby and the Moonlighting Artists at Martin Goodman's Empire Will Eisner's The Spirit #01 Will Eisner's The Spirit #02 Will Eisner's The Spirit #03 Will Eisner's The Spirit #04 Will Eisner's The Spirit #05 Will Eisner's The Spirit #06 Will Eisner's The Spirit #07 Will Eisner's The Spirit #08 Will Eisner's The Spirit #09 Will Eisner's The Spirit #10 Will Eisner's The Spirit #11 Will Eisner's The Spirit #12 Will Eisner's The Spirit: Corpse Makers #1 Will Eisner's The Spirit: Corpse Makers #2 Will Eisner's The Spirit: Corpse Makers #3 Will Eisner: A Spirited Life Deluxe Edition Young Romance Vol. 2: The Early Simon & Kirby Romance Comics Young Romance: The Best of Simon & Kirby's Romance Comics
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Post by Dizzy D on Jun 28, 2017 12:51:47 GMT -5
The Wildstorm #5 by Warren Ellis (writer) and Jon Davis-Hunt (artist), Steve Buccellato (Colourist) and Simon Bowland (letterer).
The Cover: Zealot aiming a gun while a Daemonite sneaks up behind her. Daemonites were the ancient enemy of Zealot's race, the Kherans, but the design looks quite different from both their Wildstorm form and their New52 appearance. More on that later.
Page 2: Michael's sentence "Strange damn world. I love it." looks like a callback to Ellis' previous Wildstorm work, Planetary: "Strange world. Let's keep it that way." Not an exact quote, but the same sentiment.
Page 5-7: Zealot meets the Daemonite, so let's sum up the differences: The original Wildstorm Daemonites were rather reptilian in appearance and heavily inspired by Giger's Alien design, but with an extra set of smaller vestigal arms. The new 52 Daemonites were taller and transparent blue with a diamond-shaped head with facial tentacles. We don't get to see the full Daemonite here, but it seems to have spider- or crablike legs, the vestigal arms are gone, but it has small wings. The snout is probably the most notable change to their heads. The whole design looks more like a medieval demonic creature than an alien, which kinda fits with the concept. Zealot calls the creature Daemon instead of Daemonite, could be that she's just shortening it or a conscious decision to keep them close to their concept: aliens that inspired tales of demons and monsters. The Daemon pretty much confirms that Zealot/Lucy here is also an alien like in the original universe. We have seen no connection yet between Zealot and Jacob Marlowe's group in this version though. Zealot and the Daemon are quite polite too each other compared to their previous incarnations. There is still animosity, but they are actually holding a conversation and are not immediately trying to kill each other. The Daemon doesn't appear to be evil, it has its own goals, but seems quite reasonable.
Page 8: More of Voodoo's stills from her music video. The first is Voodoo dressed as Adrianna of the CAT, standing in space (or possible the Bleed, seeing the red colour, but there are planets around and the Bleed itself did not have planets). The second image is of Voodoo with a Daemonite arm. In the original Wildstorm universe and in the New52 revival, Voodoo had an Daemonite ancestor and could change herself into a Daemonite shape. She is standing in front of an I.O. sign and wearing the same clothes as Michael Cray does. The third image is Voodoo, dressed as Jenny Sparks, except with an American Flag instead of a British one. All three images, like images in previous issues, hint that Voodoo knows more about the Wildstorm universe than a regular person would. A possible explanation could be Voodoo's original powers: her original power in the Wildstorm Universe was "The Sight", the unique ability to see the otherwise invisible Daemonites inside their human or alien hosts. A variation on the Sight could have given her visions which she channels into her work. Pure speculation though.
Page 9: Michael Cray is smart enough to figure out that Angie is not an enemy, but a victim.
Page 12-16: Adrianna tells Angie that she used to be part of Skywatch, in the original she was an U.S.S.R. cosmonaut. In the original, her body became host to the Void, a small part of a Goddess of Light, whose being was shattered into many different parts and possessed at least 2 persons and some artifacts. Here her powers came from the Bleed; Skywatch managed to enter the Bleed, but crashed, a giant, alien hand saved and transformed her (I've been checking if the hand looks like the hand of the Galactus-homage from Planetary, but it looks to be more gaseous than solid in its short appearance). She tells Angie that she was found by Jacob Marlowe, in the original it was the other way around; Adrianna finds and inspires Jacob Marlowe, forcing him to remember the alien warrior he once was.
Page 17-21: I take back everything I said about Craven last time, once Michael sees through his lies, the polite veneer immediately disappears. We also get some flashbacks from Michael. In the original, Michael was the son of a long line of military men, his father a Navy admiral. His father here wears a Black Panther medallion, who tells his son on the phone that joining the Navy is a crazy idea, so quite a different attitude to the U.S. and the Navy.
page 22 Christine Trelane introduces herself to Cray as a member of the Executive Protection Services. That name doesn't ring a bell and we know she's Skywatch.
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Post by Dizzy D on Jun 28, 2017 5:00:06 GMT -5
I've also added it to my pulllist (same reason I'll be picking up Suicide Squad today: Sejic on art). Haven't read the issue yet, but I hope this has more success than Sejic's recent works, cause he deserves more and all of them were cancelled just a few issues in (excluding Sunstone, which is pretty damn successful). Now give him art and writing on Wonder Woman
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Post by Dizzy D on Jun 28, 2017 1:43:42 GMT -5
Seconding/thirding: Wonder Woman (till creative team change), Grayson and Demon Knights.
Adding: Midnighter: a spin-off from Grayson. Kinda disappointed that they broke up Apollo and him, but they were reunited in the later mini, so all is forgiven.
Other New52 titles I read: Stormwatch: Had some interesting ideas and new characters, but overall it was directionless, not helped by creative teams changing every 5 seconds. Starlin came in and gave the worst performance I've ever seen him do, so that part definitely not recommended.
Voodoo: Completely different take on the character, which I didn't like, made worse by switching creative teams halfway through (seeing a trend yet?)
Grifter: See Voodoo with the added insult that the creative team they switched to was Rob Liefeld.
Ravagers: Bought issue 1 for Gen13 members, one of the few single issues I never finished.
Team7: I like Justin Jordan a lot and his ideas in interviews for this series were absolutely on point for me, but the end result was disappointing. Don't know if I blame Jordan for that, there were so many editors rewriting the comics during New52.
Batman/Superman: Bought it for Greg Pak and Jae Lee, not bad, but I think I've read enough Superman and Batman for the rest of my life.
Both Legion series: Gave them a try, didn't like them. Shame cause I got basically all Legion comics up to Legion of 3 Worlds.
And had some trades from various other titles picked up for cheap, but none made an impression.
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Post by Dizzy D on Jun 27, 2017 5:05:41 GMT -5
Got a copy of Darkest Dungeon at the Steam Summer Sale, pretty hard and I get too attached to my party members, which is a bad idea for a roguelike, but overall enjoyable. Artstyle is heavily inspired by Mike Mignola.
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Post by Dizzy D on Jun 16, 2017 10:35:10 GMT -5
The Wildstorm #4 by Warren Ellis (writer) and Jon Davis-Hunt (artist), Steve Buccellato (Colourist) and Simon Bowland (letterer).
The Cover: The Engineer escaping from the bunker she was hiding in, flying through the large radio antenna on top of it.
Page 2: Like I said, Adrianna looks more human, but isn't. Removing the glass shard from her head (and it's several inches long), immediately wakes her up.
Page 5: Miles calls for Ben Santini. In the original universe Santini was a high-ranking officer in IO, head of the Black Razors and the one tasked with investigating the WildC.A.T.S. in issue #1 of that series. Santini later became the main character in Stormwatch: Team Achilles.
Page 9: We see the aforementioned Breslau II, the stealth spaceship Skywatch uses. It looks exactly like the flying saucers in Voodoo's video clip, suggesting that she knows a lot more about what's going on.
Page 10: Skywatch has teleportation technology. They don't activate it by asking for a "Door" like the original though.
Page 11: Bendix' assistant, Miss Pennington is Lauren Pennington, in the original universe known as Stormwatch member Fahrenheit (flight and fire powers). She seems to be getting along with Henry rather well, who is verbally abusive and says that he wants to murder everybody, but overall seems more bark than bite compared to his original.
Page 18-19: We see Skywatch from the Outside, the main shape is the same (a large X), but this one looks like it was built out of dozens of smaller spacestations.
Page 20: Michael Cray's powers accidentally activate, disintegrating part of the coffee cup in front of him. Definitely not his previous powers.
Page 21: Miles Craven, despite ordering the death of Angela Spica and various strangers before, is now acting like an actual human being! His conversation with Michael Cray shows him concerned. A big step up from the charicature of evil government spook he used to be.(though Miles, you are working for the Intelligence Community, telling your husband all about your day at work probably is a big No-no).
Page 22: Angie is walking to Tiverton. This means nothing to me, anybody get a reference?
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Post by Dizzy D on Jun 16, 2017 10:13:49 GMT -5
The Wildstorm #3 by Warren Ellis (writer) and Jon Davis-Hunt (artist), Steve Buccellato (Colourist) and Simon Bowland (letterer).
The Cover: Jenny Sparks, another of Ellis' creations, sitting on a burning crate, with a gun and smoking a cigarette. Jenny looks different, she never needed a gun before (having some impressive superhuman powers: control over electricity and turning herself into electricity), she has black hair while she used to be blonde (joining Savant, 2 for 2 on blondes turning dark-haired. And Grifter used to be blond and is now a redhead, but it's a less noticeable change.) The Union Flag on her shirt is black/yellow/white instead of the red/white/blue. The reason for this escapes me at the moment. The cigarette is 100% Jenny though.
Page 1: Ivana Baiul is talking to an unknown person. She seems to think that the upcoming conflict between IO and Skywatch might not be so bad, because it would mean that Craven would be forced out (leaving the space open for Ivana obviously). On a monitor in the back we see Jenny Sparks turning towards the screen and looking inside the room.
Page 2-5:Jenny travels, unseen through TV screens, tablets, advertisement boards and phones (even taking objects on a monitor into the real world as she takes a can of soda from an advertisement.) It's an interesting take on her powers. The first 3 pages contain few Wildstorm references, but a lot of DC references: - Commander Steel is shown as a digital comic on a tablet one fof the IO researchers is reading. - The Crime Doctor, seen behind a door in the same digital comic. (Note: only the names are the same, the actual characters shown, assuming they are Commander Steel and the Crime Doctor, are completely different characters. Commander Steel seems to be an old soldier in a steel lung, the Crime Doctor a CSI type crime fighter. Their DC counterparts are a superhero with superhuman strength and a Batman villain that provides medical services to Gotham's Underworld respectively). - A scrawling text below mentions the Doom Patrol. - Jenny travels through a mobile phone showing the Kord network (Kord referencing Ted Kord, the Blue Beetle) - A program on the Kord network stars the Martian Manhunter, a buglike green woman that seems to be hunting on Tinder. - Jenny's brand of cigarettes is Dr. Mid-nite. Jenny's cigarette lighter has "Mars Expedition 1955", a reference I can't directly place (A Planetary reference possibly).
And then we get to Jenny's map of the strange which is full of Wildstorm references: - John Colt is now fully named, but just a name, no picture yet. - Kenesha gets the name "Savant" added, unclear if its meant as a lastname or codename. Jenny misspells her name though as Keneshay. - The Cherubim are mentioned, the race Marlowe, Zealot and Savant belonged to in the original universe. - Lamplighter: a minor character who was a member of Stormwatch Black, a JLA homage. Only Apollo and Midnighter survived of that team. Lamplighter was based on Green Lantern. - I can't read the names in the top left. Anybody else? All the others are things we've already seen or mentioned, or too vague to mean anything at this point.
Page 17: Not much references in the last few pages: the three members of the wild CAT fight the 3 Black Razors. Kenesha's exploding bullet shocks Cole (she is definitely different from her original, Savant was one of the Wildstorm superheroes who never went for lethal force in fights.)
Page 18: Adrianna looks more human than before, but she isn't: a glass shard to the brain didn't kill her, just knocked her out. She does bleed, but her blood is light blue.
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Post by Dizzy D on Jun 16, 2017 9:33:42 GMT -5
The Wildstorm #2 by Warren Ellis (writer) and Jon Davis-Hunt (artist), Steve Buccellato (Colourist) and Simon Bowland (letterer).
The Cover: Full body shot of Grifter, who looks pretty much the same way he always looked.
Page 1-5: Angie flies to an abandoned military installation, powers down and hides. The military installation has no specific history in the original Wildstorm Universe as far as I know.
Page 6: Miles Craven and the head of Analysis (who is still unnamed) analyse Angela Spica's armour and flightpath. They are joined by Ivana Baiul. Ivana Baiul was a character in Gen13 and DV8, head of IO's science division who cybernetically enhanced herself.
Page 7: References to Skywatch vehicle, the Breslau II. I don't think I've seen the name mentioned before (apart from the city in Poland).
Page 9: Cole Cash first appearance on page. He's a bit thinner than before, but that seems to be Davis-Hunt style, for the rest he seems to be the same person: irreverant, but with military experience.
Page 10: Marlowe and Cash are joined by Kenesha. In the original universe Kenesha was the sister of Zealot (later retconned into daughter), who was a member of the WildC.A.T.s under the name Savant. She is a bit different here, dark hair instead of blond. In the original she was conceived as a female Doc Savage character: superhumanly strong, very intelligent adventurer who gathered a lot of mystical and technological artifacts over her adventures. Kenesha is still very intelligent here, tracking the Engineer and able to draw a map she saw once 18 years ago.
Page 11: Marlowe tells Cole to gather Adri and John. Adri we met last issue. John is presumably John Colt, a character who was tied to the android Spartan, the WildC.A.T.S. teamleader (think of it a Vision/Wonderman relationship and you're pretty close).
Page 12-15: Zealot is working at Skywatch. We meet Christine Trelane and Henry Bendix. Unlike Zealot, those two characters have always been connected to the Stormwatch series: Bendix was a scientist and the mission control of Stormwatch under the codename Weatherman. He also turns into one of their major villains and appeared recently in DC's Midnighter and Apollo series. Christine Trelane usually functioned as Stormwatch 2nd in command, occasionally as Weatherman herself. She had the power to activate and deactivate the powers of other superhumans. In this Bendix seems to be similar to his original universe self, but not quite as unhinged as during his villain days. Trelane seems pretty much the same she always as, a bit more depressed perhaps, but she just talked to an angry Henry Bendix, so that could just be circumstances.
Page 16: Stills from a video clip by Voodoo. Her label is Lady Backlash Records: in the original universe Backlash was a name used by superhero, Marc Slayton, another member of Team7 and Stormwatch and also an alien of the Kherubim race. His half-Japanese daughter also took the name Backlash, after Slayton retired. The flying saucers she is sitting on will come back later (issue #4).
Page 17-18: Michael Cray talks to Dr. Mary Cross, his therapist. He explains his reasons for trying to kill Marlowe (fearing that the rich would capitalize on Halo's advancements, leaving the poor behind while power plants shut down because there are not enough customers). He also confirms that he has a brain tumor.
Page 19: IO Analyst (still unnamed, grrr...) refers to Angie's hideout as "Majestic-level". Mr. Majestic, another Kheribum, was a Superman-level and type of hero in the original Wildstorm Universe. Craven sends a group of Razors after Angie. The Black Razors were IO's elite forces, normal humans, but well-trained with protective armour.
Page 20-22: Cash takes guns even though it's a rescue operation. That is because Cash is a cynic who knows better. Cash is pretty much the same he always was. Kenesha now favours guns, or more specifically 1 gun: a large revolver. Adrianna teleports them away and as they teleport, we see them travel through the Bleed. The Bleed was one of Ellis' often-used concepts in his original run, a concept that DC incorporated into their New52 universe. The Bleed is the space between universes, if you travel from one universe to another you must cross the Bleed.
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Post by Dizzy D on Jun 16, 2017 5:14:29 GMT -5
The Wildstorm #1 by Warren Ellis (writer) and Jon Davis-Hunt (artist), Ivan Plascencia (Colourist) and Simon Bowland (letterer).
The Cover: (I have the cover by Davis-Hunt, I haven't seen the variants. Anybody who has them, feel free to add to this) The main cover shows 3 of the Wildstorm characters in this issue: Zealot/Lucy Blaze, Deathblow/Michael Cray and Voodoo/Priscilla Kitaen. All three are leaving Central Park South Subway Station. More on them next. If the Subway Station has any special meaning it's lost on me.
Page 1: The blood on Zealot's face is a reference to the facial markings she had during the original WildC.A.T.S. volume 1. She stopped putting on the warpaint a bit later. In this version Zealot is a codename given to her by the agency she is working for, in the original Wildstorm comics, Zealot was a name given to her by her enemies (she founded a group of female warriors named the Coda, but turned on them when they turned into mercenaries and assassins, while she intended for them to be warriors against the threat of the alien Daemonites).
Page 2: Bravo, the clean-up crew, calls Zealot "Lucy Blaze". This was an alias Zealot used in the original universe during the 1950s when she was part of the superhero/military team Team One. In the original universe Zealot's real name is Zannah and she is a member of the alien race called the Kherubim or Kherans. Kherans look like humans, but are immortal and usually have special powers. In this revival, Zealot hasn't given any evidence that she is not human.
Page 3 Priscilla Kitaen aka Voodoo appears. The background shows a lot of posters and advertisements for Halo. Priscilla is quite different from her original version: she was mixed race (in more ways than one, she was the descendant of human, Daemonite and Kheran ancestors), but seems to be a black woman in this. She was a stripper in WildC.A.T.S. #1, but is a hiphop star in this version. Halo was the company of Jacob Marlowe, founder of the WildC.A.T.S. and also the focus of Wildcats volume 3.
Page 4: Voodoo seems fascinated with urban legends and stories of alien abduction. She refers to a man turning into a bat in 1939 (obviously not a Wildstorm, but a DC reference). Halo founder Jacob Marlowe is seen on a screen and he seems very similar to his original incarnation, just he has a beard now. More on him later as he actually appears. Voodoo is seen by Miles Craven and his husband, Julian. Miles Craven is more sociable here than he was in the original universe. Craven was head of I.O. and mostly shown manipulating heroes and villains to gain more power for himself. Craven's personal life was never touched upon in the original comics, so it's very possible that he was in a relationship back then as well and now is just more sociable, because he's together with his husband.
Page 5/6 More banter between Miles and Julian as they are approached by Angela Spica. Angela/Angie was known as the Engineer in the original universe and a member of the Authority. Angie is rambling here and is starting to bleed, the process that turned her into the Engineer is apparently a lot more uncomfortable in this universe than before. Angie mentions that Marlowe is "making phones and reducing utility bills", in Wildcats 3.0 Jacob Marlowe's successor, Jack Marlowe, uses alien technology to create batteries that last forever. Everlasting batteries immediately start to have far reaching consequences when they discover the batteries are powerful enough to power cars and whole foreign policies are suddenly becoming irrelevant.
Page 7: As Angie leaves, we see Zealot standing near with a coffee. As we see in a later issue, her presence here is no coincidence.
Page 8 Angie confirms that she's working for IO. IO, short for International Operations (occasionally Internal Operations) was basically a darker version of S.H.I.E.L.D. in the original universe, an offshoot of the C.I.A., I.O. got jurisdiction over all metahuman related activity. Usually IO was used as villains, but it depends on who the director is at the time. John Lynch, for instance, was no saint, but the goals of IO were protecting civilization even if he had to sacrifice agents or heroes to do so.
Page 9-12: Angie transforms into her Engineer form, powered by nano-machines in her blood. The transformation is far more painful and the Engineer form is large and bulky unlike the original universe form, which was basically a naked metal woman.
Page 13-14: Angie has saved Jacob Marlowe. In the original universe, Jacob's real name is Emp, he is a nobleman of the alien Kheran race and has powers over space and energy, making him one of the more powerful Kherans. When Angie leaves, Jacob contacts Adrianna. In the original universe, Adrianna Tereshkova is a Russian cosmonaut that encountered an alien entity that possessed her. As the clairvoyant teleporter Void, she was the one that inspired Marlowe to found the WildC.A.T.S. Jacob mentions that a Michael Cray, an IO agent, tried to kill him. In the original universe Michael Cray was known as Deathblow, a soldier working, reluctantly, for IO. More on him as he actually appears. Jacob tells Adrianna to wake up the CAT. CAT is short for Covert Action Team, a type of Black Ops unit. (A wild CAT is a Black Ops team that is not allied to any government)
Page 16: Michael Cray gets debriefed by Miles Craven. In the original universe, Michael Cray was one of the members of Team 7, a military unit of the best of the best. CIA Director Miles Craven used an experimental genetic weapon on them to get himself an army of superpowered soldiers. Results were mixed, but the surviving IO members were the backbone of most Wildstorm superhero teams and solo-heroes. Cray initially didn't seem to be affected by the weapon and remained powerless as his teammates gained powerful psychic powers. Cray says he's part of IO Wetworks, probably just a reference to the regular term Wetworks, but Wetworks was the codename of Team 8, the successors of Team 7. Cray was not a member of that team though, his Team 7 colleague Jackson Dane was. Craven asks Cray, flippantly, if he has some type of brain tumor (as explanation for the messed-up assassination attempt). In the original universe, Michael Cray was dying of a brain tumor when he left IO.
page 17-20 Both Cray and Marlowe go over the assassination attempt, Cray to Craven, Marlowe to Adrianna. Marlowe has a "spur", a bit of Kheran biotechnology that is basically a lasergun in his wrist. In the original universe, his powers were more standard superhero energy powers. Marlowe confirms that he is very old, he hasn't used his spur in a hundred years. The Kherans in the original universe were all more than 3000 year old, so 100 years is nothing to a Kheran. Cray unconsciously disables the the spur by touching it and he also sets off the xenobiological sensors in Marlowe's lab; this also is a new take on the character. The Gen-Factor experiment in the original universe did not make the characters non-human (though we don't know how the sensors exactly works) and Cray's powers in the end were more telepathy and regeneration. We get to see Adrianna, who is looking more normal than her original version, which looked like (another) naked woman covered in metal, leaving only her face visible. In this she is wearing an cosmonaut outfit and only her eyes indicate that she isn't human. She also is more human in behaviour, the original Void being rather formal and cryptic. Marlowe finally mentions Cole. Cole Cash, aka Grifter, was a member of Team 7 who joined the WildC.A.T.S. together with his lover Zealot.
Page 21: Cray mentions that the mysterious rocket-powered woman (Angie) might be related to Skywatch. Skywatch was the orbital headquarters of Stormwatch, an U.N. superhuman organisation. Skywatch seems to be an organisation here. Cray starts to bleed from his nose and passes out, suggesting that Craven's jab earlier was actually foreshadowing.
Page 22: The woman who leads Analytics is unnamed (I don't think she's named in any of the other issues so far either). I originally thought she was a version of Ivana Baiul, but she shows up in issue #2, so if anybody has an idea? She can of course be an original character.
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Post by Dizzy D on Jun 16, 2017 3:54:36 GMT -5
Disclaimer: I'm making this thread mostly for my own entertainment and as a resource, but I hope some others get some use out of it.
Introduction: What is Wildstorm and the history of Wildstorm Wildstorm was one of the founding Image studios, the one headed by Jim Lee. Its starting titles were WildC.A.T.S. and Stormwatch. Like most early Image series, the main draw were the artists and writing came a distant second. This was the source of a lot of criticism and Lee solved this by hiring various writers for their main titles (Ron Marz for Stormwatch, Chris Claremont, James Robinson and for a longer period Alan Moore for WildC.A.T.S.).
In 1998, Lee decided that he rather drew comics again than ran a company and sold Wildstorm to DC, leaving Image. For most of the time Wildstorm remained an independent imprint and became an imprint focused on superheroics dipped in politics, modern technology and conspiracies. Writers became the driving force like Warren Ellis (DV8, Stormwatch, The Authority, Planetary), Joe Casey (Wildcats, Automatic Kafka, Mr. Majestic), Adam Warren (Gen13) and Ed Brubaker (Point Blank, Sleeper). This is one of my favourite periods in comics and the reason I'm making this thread.
Critical success didn't mean financial success though and as the great writers left, many titles were left floundering or were wrapped up by the original writer. DC tried several attempts to revive Wildstorm: a revival headed by Grant Morrison was stillborn as Morrison left his titles after 1 or 2 issues (Gail Simone's Gen13 survived a little longer, but overal this attempt was not very successful). Another revival decided that the way forward to make civilization collapse and have the series take place in a post-apocalyptic world.
When DC did a linewide reboot, switching to The New52 tag-line, several parts of the Wildstorm universe were incorporated into main DC continuity with limited success. (I quite liked Orlando's Midnighter and Cornell's Stormwatch had potential.)
So we end up with the Wildstorm revival: Warren Ellis, one of the writers responsible for Wildstorm's initial success, was offered a chance to do a reboot of the Wildstorm series. Together with artist Jon Davis-Hunt, Warren planned out a 24 issue series, 4 story arcs of 6 issues each. There might also be tie-ins by other writers. It might also be cancelled 6 issues in, cause Comic book Industry, everybody!
What is this thread: I'll go through the individual issues (4 released so far) and point out characters (and compare them to their original Wildstorm incarnations), references and plot-lines.
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Post by Dizzy D on Jun 13, 2017 2:21:25 GMT -5
Seeing this barrage of super-hero movies that rake in billions of dollars, I feel very vindicated as a comic-book fan. See, Hollywood moguls? All you needed was to treat the material intelligently and respectfully to turn it into a gold mine. And then you see that even things like Batman vs. Superman made billions, so intelligently and respectfully somehow don't seem part of the equation.
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Post by Dizzy D on Jun 11, 2017 16:35:07 GMT -5
So I'm getting bombarded with funny and hartwarming stories about Adam West, but this one is probably my favourite so far:
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