Comic Review: Stormwatch #1
Overall Stormwatch is worth a read, as long as you're prepared to do a little big of digging online afterwards to get the most out of the book. It may be a bit of a marathon but things seem promising for this book.
Book: Stormwatch #1 Written By: Paul Cornell, Art By: Miguel Sepulveda Publisher: DC Comics Price: $2.99 Pages: 32 I picked up Stormwatch yesterday with no previous knowledge of the team or what they aim to do in the series, I picked it up simply because it had Paul Cornell's name on it as writer. But for people who don't know who Paul Cornell is, is there anything worth picking this book up for? Stormwatch is a top secret Superhuman Police Force which is currently traveling to various parts of the world (and space) trying to investigate extra terrestrial activity before the superheroes get their grubby hands on it. At the same time they are looking for a new recruits - Apollo, to be brought into Stormwatch all the while The Moon becomes sentient and begins to threaten The Earth. These guys dispise superheroes and their whole ethics to fighting crime: "They're ametures. We're the professionals" From what I can see so far, Stormwatch #1 is the bizarro Justice Leauge #1 when looking at the way they approach crime fighting, the way the story is structured and the way we are introduced to its cast. While Justice League #1 only introduced a handful of the main cast, we as an audience acknowledge that they would get to the other members in latter issues. Stormwatch introduced the nine key players of the book in the twenty pages of its first issue. Justice League could have worked by introducing all of the team in issue one simply due to pop culture knowledge of the JLA in the publics eyes, we would know who everyone is so they could jump right into the action, but it was decided not to for the sake of pacing. Stormwatch does the latter approach and we as an audience we struggle to get to grips with who everyone is, especially if we have no previous knowledge of the book. Stormwatch may have worked better with a slower start to help introduce each character over a longer period. In fairness every member of the team has a moment to show off their abilities and have an unofficial role call for the book, my favourite being The Projectionist and The Eminence of Blades (both new characters created by Cornell for this book) however I feel a trip to wikipedia is imminent to get the most out of this book. I had never read an issue of Stormwatch during its Wildstorm days and I can't decide if the fact that I want/need to wiki search Stormwatch's background after reading this issue makes this re-launch a success or not. Miguel Sepulveda is on art duties for this book and brings a wide variety of styles to the table from a deep space cosmic storm, city streets of Moscow, mossy lunar caverns and The Himalayas (probably my favourite set piece in the book) props to Colourist - Allen Passalaqua for his work on the book. The visuals help ground the audience in the book and set up a tone for each location. I look forward to what they do when the time comes to do battle with the moon! Overall Stormwatch is worth a read, as long as you're prepared to do a little big of digging online afterwards to get the most out of the book. It may be a bit of a marathon but things seem promising for this book. 
rating: 3.5