DC to relaunch Wildstorm under Warren Ellis

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Submitted by Mike 'Ace' Maillaro on Tue, 10/04/2016 - 12:09

From Comicbook.com:

Warren Ellis will return to DC, to work on some of the characters that made him a household name among comic book fans, as the curator of a new pop-up imprint called WildStorm, ComicBook.com has learned exclusively.

Following on the heels of the success of Gerard Way's Young Animal imprint, WildStorm will take a similar approach, with Ellis writing the "main" book and curating the others.

WildStorm will debut mid-February 2017 with a regular monthly comic titled The Wild Storm, written by Ellis with art by Jon Davis-Hunt (Vertigo’s Clean Room). This ongoing series will reset the known WildStorm universe and introduce new iterations of WildStorm characters such as Grifter, Voodoo, The Engineer, Jenny Sparks and others.

"After long reflection, I couldn't turn down the invitation to renovate the house that Jim Lee built, and refit its unique combination of cosmic paranoia and paramilitary conspiracy for the post-political space madness of the twenty-teens,” said Ellis. “Looking back to look forward."

THE WILD STORM will serve as a launching pad for several future series: Michael Cray, WildC.A.T.S. and Zealot. No creative team announcements have yet been made for those books.

“There are precious few visionaries in our business and fewer still like Warren who can elevate mythos with both stylistic panache and idiosyncratic spectacle. His work at WildStorm remains the tone which best defines and reflects the WildStorm Universe,” said DC Publisher Jim Lee. “I know I speak for WildStorm fans the world over when I say I can’t wait to see what Warren and Jon have in store for fans in February!”

Source: Comicbook.com

Commentary: I have been a Wildstorm fan for a real long time. Loved Gen 13 growing up, and Ellis's Stormwatch/Authority is pretty much the perfect comic book series. It seems like they will be scrapping their attempts to shoehorn Wildstorm into the core DC universe. For the most part, that is probably a real good decision. It's hard to tell "The Authority" in a universe where the Justice League already exists. Making Wildstorm and Milestone part of the DCU seemed like a good idea when they announced New-52, but the execution just felt clumsy at times. They can use a fresh start (hopefully they will do the same for Milestone if they ever get around to actually doing the Milestone relaunch they have been promising forever).

Putting Ellis at the helm is a great choice. He's always had such a terrific vision for creating unique superhero stories. This is probably the most exciting part of this announcement for me...I just hope Ellis does a better job about getting books out on time than he has in recent years.

So far they have only announced a handful of series, but I am really hoping we can get at least Gen 13 and Stormwatch back too.