“Devolver”
Writer: Peter Milligan
Pencils: Ignacio Calero
Inks: Sean Parson, Walden Wong, Eber Ferreira, Rob Hunter, Julio Ferriera
Colors: Guy Major & Nathan Eyring
Letters: Rob Leigh
Assistant Editor: Sean Mackiewicz
Editor: Pat McCallum
Cover: Scott Clark
(No Spoilers)
After a slow-paced last issue, Stormwatch is back and kicking this month. Milligan takes an odd premise but puts a spin on it that creates a truly threatening adversary for Stormwatch. Other than some problems with shifting in the inks for the art, we get a strong issue that leaves some great threads open for future stories.
Who ever thought that Neanderthals would be threatening? Well obviously Peter Milligan did and he does a good job of convincing us of the same in this issue. Even though the last issue was a little slow, between these two issue Milligan gives us some very interesting history about Stormwatch as an organization. He’s really taking the idea that this team has been around for centuries and running with it. One of the best things about this is he’s doing it in some pretty memorable flashbacks. The summaries he’s giving about past events could easily be series of their own. But the way he presents them they’re so matter of fact and they feel like history that’s legitimate.
We also get to focus on The Engineer a bit and get to see a glimpse of her origin. It’s very similar to her Wildstorm origin except we get to see how gruesome it was. Also as in the original WSU, we see that she had a predecessor. It’s cool to see these comparisons to the old universe. We also get more info about her and Harry Tanner’s relationship (which was only teased in the early issues). It not only adds more to her character but adds more to Tanner who I’m pretty close to deciding is my favorite character of the book. At the very least, he’s my favorite villain so far.
My only complaint is the use of the inkers in the issue. There are 5 of them! Now, for the flashbacks I did appreciate the different inking style because it distinguished those scenes from the present day scenes. It was actually some of the present day scenes that I did not enjoy very much. Especially since I like Calero’s art and I felt some of the inkers were not doing his work justice. But I guess in the interest of meeting deadlines, sometimes these things are necessary.
I’m really excited for this new direction for the book. So far Stormwatch has had some interesting adversaries but they’ve been taken care of pretty quickly. I’m glad to see villains here who are meant to last more than one issue. I’m looking forward to what those evil Neanderthals have planned next (I can’t believe I just typed that sentence).
8 out of 10 (On its way to greatness!)