Comics / Comic Reviews / DC Comics

Review: The Wild Storm #9

By Philip Schweier
November 15, 2017 - 04:42

Perhaps I came late to the Wild Storm franchise, or maybe I just haven’t enjoyed enough of Warren Ellis’ work to appreciate it. But after several issues, the Wild Storm reads like a collection of disjointed scenarios with very little connective tissue. Maybe Ellis’ ultimate goal is to see it depicted on film, but writing a comic book in that format is a slippery slope. They are different mediums, each with its own language and syntax. One does not necessarily translate well to the other.

That said, the latest issue seems to be setting the board for the next conflict between Player 1 and Player 2. Who those players may be exactly is hard to say, as I’m still uncertain who is the good guy and who is the bad. Knowing modern comic books, there is probably neither, just a sliding scale of morality.

Artist Jon Davis-Hunt seems to make a conscious effort to contain all the action (and non-action) in tidy panels that conform to a standard grid. Each image fits with its neighbor in a uniform, inter-locking grid, suggesting a faux-system of structure. But like the morality of the cast, it’s all a fraud, making me wonder how the story would read in prose format. Would it be any clearer?

Maybe my tastes are too simplistic. I do come from a generation where the good guys wore white and the bad guys wore black. Villains were evil for the sake of being evil. I would prefer to see more of that here, but your mileage may vary.

Rating: 4/5

Last Updated: August 31, 2023 - 08:12