Stormwatch Vol. 2: Enemies of Earth (Stormwatch Vol. III series)

Another superhero team circling, looking for a way into our pockets.

Apr 25, Joseph rated it liked it Shelves: Not quite as good as the first volume, but still an enjoyable read. There is a lot going on here, with a secret tribe of Neanderthals who are determined to bring Homo Sapiens to its knees and restore the Neanderthals to evolutionary prominence, to the Martian Manhunter creeping out the rest of the team, to the burgeoning relationship with Apollo and Midnighter, and even the subplot of traitor Harry Tanner.

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This make the book feel a bit rushed in some places, and it doesn't help that the artistic Not quite as good as the first volume, but still an enjoyable read. This make the book feel a bit rushed in some places, and it doesn't help that the artistic team, as well as the writing chores, are all over the place. Peter Milligan was writing both series, so it makes sense to have a bit of a crossover to expose both teams to new readers. I think the Red Lanterns are a bit of a one trick pony, like the rest of the Rainbow Lantern brigade, but there were some interesting moments nonetheless.

Seeing Jack Hawksmoor explore various cities and dealing with their avatars is always interesting. Here, the avatars of Hiroshima and Nagasaki show up to comfort the village near Chernobyl, and help the city of Chernobyl defeat a foe. I'll be picking up the next volume in a couple of days. Aug 14, William Thomas rated it liked it. You know why this book never worked out, right? Too many damned Wildstorm characters that everyone forgot about, and not enough DC characters for anyone's liking.

I mean, all that had to be done was take some of the JSA guys from Johns' run, and insert them here. Like Thom Kallor, The Starman, or Magog, and you'd have had a few more readers and more to play around with. But Jim Lee is a supreme narcissist and as head of DC, thought he knew better than everyone else. I mean, what other a-hole wou You know why this book never worked out, right? So instead of changing it up a bit, we only get Mattian Manhunter my favorite DC character, actually and the entire Authority as it stood.

Don't get me wrong, I love these characters and the team pre-DC days. Wildstorm had a boatload of talent back in the day with Morrison and Millar and Ellis. And they got away with making R-rated books and it was great. Fast forward to today and it's a little underwhelming. Volume 1 did a great job setting things up and it's actually the best Cornell has ever been, aside from Demon Knights. Now we get Peter Milligan, and it's fair to say he's in over his head and the appearance of the Red Lanterns is being dictated from on high by his editors.

Which is where we get all the NU 52 problems. The editors are doing all the writing for everyone, and it's the biggest problem the company has. Used to be the writers would sit around an office and toss out a years worth of ideas with one another, now it's the brass mandating things without regard for the reader. What they've forgotten is that good writing sells the books.

Just look at all the creator-owned stuff Image pumps out. Quality of the writing. This could have been a hell of a lot more fun than it was, and as it stands, is only mildly entertaining in the second volume. Milligan has a sense of where the book should be centered, but just doesn't have a grip on each character the way Cornell did. I'll get to V3 soon.

Stormwatch Vol 3

Playing catch up again. Drowning in a backlog. As for the art, I mean, my god it's all over the place. There's zero consistency from this new artist, Ignacio Calero. His lines are too thick, it's all extremely hurried, he has little to no knowledge of composition or paneling. Page to page, you'd think it was a different artist each time.

Apr 24, Kyle rated it liked it Shelves: I didn't hate this, but I didn't love it either. The characterization for this team is getting week, except for, surprisingly, the relationship between Midnighter and Apollo.

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It is likely their relationship that kept me reading it, because the actual storylines are just plain silly. The action is choppy and jumps all over the place; events happen too quickly with virtually no lead-up or discussion to what happens. I think this series would be better if they would slow down the action, take time I didn't hate this, but I didn't love it either. I think this series would be better if they would slow down the action, take time to explain the importance of what is going on without a bunch of techno-pseudoscience-babble, and spend A LOT more time developing relationships between teammates.

Feb 18, Jared rated it liked it. I like what Peter Milligan brings to the book, and how in this volume it integrated itself more into the DC continuity. Dec 07, Robert rated it it was ok Shelves: Huge plot jumps, unexplained and incomplete crossovers, 'surprise' back-story revelations, all the typical b-team crap, all found in Stormwatch. Feb 16, Tone rated it it was amazing Shelves: Like an outsider, keeping watch on all the superheroes from afar and I'm not crazy about what I see.

Feb 23, Sam Quixote rated it it was ok. Pretty goddamn terrible superhero comics! Dec 25, Mark rated it liked it Shelves: The Dark Side and Stormwatch, Vol. I will keep it all spoiler-free. Before there was Superman, Batman, Green Lantern, and the rest of the Justice League, who was around to protect Earth from all of the interstellar, extradimensional, and metaphysical threats to its existence? The answer to that question, according to this graphic novel, is an ultra-secret organization called Stormwatch. Like the Justice League, they are headquartered in a space station. Also unlike the Justice League, Stormwatch has protected Earth for many centuries.

Stormwatch was originally published by WildStorm Publications and many of its characters were created by the famed Warren Ellis. I picked up the book because it featured Martian Manhunter, who was one of my favorite characters from the JLA days. However, I was unfamiliar with the rest of the characters the ones acquired from WildStorm , such as Apollo, Engineer, Midnighter, Jenny Quantum, and others.

Nevertheless, I was excited for this book because of its far-out sci-fi setting and art, and because it featured Martian Manhunter. I have mixed feelings about these books. As mentioned, I really like the sci-fi setting, and this is helped immensely by the artwork. Volume 1 was penciled by Miguel Sepulveda, and his other-worldly artwork was very cool special mention goes to the cover of issue 2, which looks like an homage to the classic Starro cover of the first Justice League team-up.

The art alone in volume 2 makes the book worth a read, even if you skip the dialog bubbles and just enjoy the artwork. So the sci-fi setting and art were great, but the sci-fi plot written by Paul Cornell, who was a writer for the Doctor Who TV series was less stellar, even though it did have its moments. Eventually, in volume 2, Paul Jenkins and later Peter Milligan take over as writers and I think the writing improves in volume 2. First and foremost, since I was drawn in by the presence of Martian Manhunter, I have to say I am disappointed because there were no creative or interesting ways that the character was used, except maybe in the very last story arc of volume 2.

Adam One has been around since medieval times, so like Vandal Savage is his superpower the fact that he doesn't age, or is it something else? Also on the topic of superpowers, I found some of the superpowers were executed in way that was a little awkward. A new character called Projectionist is introduced and she can control all of the news and internet media on Earth. There are occasional interesting scenes involving this power for example: So, how does he survive on their hyperspace station? This is addressed in a single frame where they show that the station contains a church, and that makes the station count as a city.

This begs the obvious question… what exactly constitutes a city? The writers may have been better off just ignoring the issue altogether, rather than introducing one frame of explanation that just opens up more questions than it answers. As a physicist, I have to comment on the pseudoscience used in this book. These words all have clear definitions that are clearly unknown by the author based on the way that the author has used them. My examples are contrived, I know, but I hope they suffice to make my point. And my point is simple in its essence: Make it truly speculative.

Prevent the possibility of contradictory nonsense by just avoiding those words altogether. Instead, come up with something truly unique.

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I know there is always someone out there that will know more than the author on any given topic. That makes the author's job of satisfying everyone seem insurmountable. And maybe it is. But there's an easy way to mitigate the situation: There are thousands of people with a PhD in physics that would be happy to respond to an email with comments and suggestions.

I, for instance, would do it and have done it for free. Just send me an email seriously, I love talking about physics! In summary, I enjoyed these books for their setting and artwork. However, the writing left a lot to be desired. I give it 4 stars for the artwork and 2 stars for the writing, for an average of 3 stars. May 15, Duncan rated it it was ok. Pale imitation done in the Didio DC "Kill 'em all" style, too dark for kids, teenagers, and most 20, 30, 40, and year-olds. Jun 09, Rick Hunter rated it liked it Recommends it for: This isn't one of my favorite series from DC's New 52, but it's free to read on a friend's Comixology account.

As I stated in my review for volume 1 of this series, I really loved the original characters of Stormwatch back when they were first created at Wildstorm comics in the 's. I wish that they had used so of those characters for this book since DC now owns them all.

Stormwatch: Enemies of Earth

Instead they used the characters from the Ellis run on the series at Image, Martian Manhunter, and some either new charact This isn't one of my favorite series from DC's New 52, but it's free to read on a friend's Comixology account. Instead they used the characters from the Ellis run on the series at Image, Martian Manhunter, and some either new characters or just ones I'd never seen before. Paul Jenkins starts off this volume as the writer, but is soon replaced by Peter Milligan. I'm not gonna break down each writer's work separately because they are both about equal in quality.

I could do without their gayness too. I really like the direction the last three characters were headed towards the end of the book. Unfortunately, Manhunter left at the end. Hopefully the story of volume 3 is good enough to keep me interested since my favorite character in the series is gone. Miguel Sepulveda draws an issue during the middle of the book, but the rest is drawn by Ignacio Calero. In my review for the 1st volume of this series, I talked about Sepulveda's work being neither great nor terrible.

• Stormwatch Vol 3 | DC Database | FANDOM powered by Wikia.
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Nothing about his art has changed since then. It is still rather mediocre. He does draw some decent looking aliens though. Calero's art is just a tad better than Sepulveda's. The things that actually stands out the most to me about his art are the effects around the characters when 5 hey are using their powers. A lot of artists might draw a little bit of electricity around the hands of a person with lightning powers.

Calero goes all out and puts a bunch of it on the page. The colorist on this book does a nice job too and really draws one's eye to the effects. Some of his people could look better. In one panel, he went way over the top with the amount of veins he drew standing out on Apollo. Other than that the art is pretty solid from him. Since both scores are 3. It's just a little better than volume 1, but I'd still have a hard time recommending this to anyone that is not a huge fan of one or more of these characters. I said I'd stick this series out until the end because it's only 30 issues long.

Enemies of Earth fails to capitalize on this and ends up being another volume of introduction, once again, saving the bigger stories for future volumes. This is partially due to a creative shift from Paul Cornell, author of the previous volume, to Paul Jenkins and Peter Milligan; however a pointless and somewhat intrusive Red Lanterns crossover can also share in this blame. All of this disarray creates a book that fails to tell one solid story and instead tells multiple independent stories that do not setup or build upon each other at all. Hopefully, with the creative team stabilizing in the next volume, this series will get back on track in the future.

The beginning of this book is probably the best part of this collection, as it features Stormwatch at their best. The team goes head to head with weird villains and pseudo-logic that writer Paul Jenkins impressively manages to make sense. There is a bit of action, a bit of suspense, and an ending that is completely unexpected. The highlight here though, is the team chemistry.

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Stormwatch has become a weird and oddly dysfunctional family. The Engineer and Martian Manhunter have a parental relationship with Jenny Quantum, teaching her match and bribing her with the promise of a puppy, while the rest of the team bickers like siblings. In the middle of this collection, there is a two issue crossover with the Red Lanterns series. This starts with a battle between a Red Lantern and Apollo and ends with an all out brawl between the entirety of Stormwatch and the Red Lantern leader, Atrocitus. There are some great moments here, such as Midnighter nearly receiving a Red Lantern ring and some cool fight sequences, that are sure to provide some thrills for action seekers.

However, besides this, the entire crossover feels completely hollow. Both Stormwatch and the Red Lanterns leave the encounter with nothing of value and neither plotline is advanced at all. There is a hint that a future encounter between these teams will happen again, yet this is never delivered. All in all, this portion of the book is alright but will be instantly forgettable after reading. The next chapter of the book sees the rise of a secret group of Neanderthals, called the Hidden People, who want to devolve Homo sapiens in order to become the dominate species.

The story is about as ridiculous as the premise sounds so readers can expect it to be pretty uninteresting. It also is a one-and-done type story that comes out of nowhere and sets up nothing. The final chapter mirrors this format and dedicates itself almost entirely to saying goodbye to Martian Manhunter, who leaves the series at this point.

However, the issue does manage to set things up for a future confrontation involving Harry Tanner, who has been absent since Vol. Ignacio Calero provides the majority of the artwork in this book. Similar to the story, the artwork here falls short of good but manages to avoid being bad. The main problem lies in consistency. Calero draws people and faces that vary from page to page in a way that can become annoying while reading.