WILDSTORM PRODUCTIONS BEINGS – Jim Lee’s WILDCATS #1 and STORMWATCH #1 – WILDSTORM WEDNESDAY – Presented by Peter A DeLuca (AKAPAD)

The beginning of Wildstorm Wednesday can be traced to two titles WildCATS #1 and Stormwatch #1. Hang out with Peter A DeLuca AKAPAD as he brings you through both of these premiere issues and yes he has read them.

Here is the transcript for Wildstorm Productions Begins

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AKA patters welcome to another episode of the weekly WildStorm Wednesday the Deep dive of the ’90s publishing Powerhouse created and run by the man Jim Lee the biggest name in comics or is he we don’t know but guess what what is the birth of Wild Storm where did it start how did it start well let’s just showcase two of the books that are really in equal Wild Storm number one let’s [Music] go AKAPADers what’s happening welcome back for another weekly installment of Wild Storm Wednesday people it’s a

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little factious when I say uh Jim Le’s the greatest Jim Le’s this and Jim Le’s that look come on Jim Lee has the type of career that I will give my third nutty for with that said welcome back to the channel Peter a I got to put this down Peter a DeLuca here AKAPAD 69 and stay with me new throughout Philadelphia PA Europe and the vast Multiverse as your eclectic one people so we did Wild Storm Wednesday years ago and originally it was a streaming type show uh I would go live and and show case a book or open

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up a box of trading cards and like my intent at that point was just to document my exploration into all things Wild Storm and then something happened a shift happened I looked at the company different as I acquired and learned more about the products the story lines the characters what each individual series and and eventually Wild Storm getting sold into DC Comics and what happened if is one of the most tragic stories in com book history equally tragic as when Marvel acquired Malibu or the ultraverse so my opinion shifted my

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opinion changed and effectively now like two episodes ago I created what you know we kind of call Wild Storm Wednesdays 2.0 and I wanted to to go back to Center go back to the original idea bringing wildstorm Productions to you and now we’re doing it in a way uh somewhat chronologically because I know enough about the entire scope so now we can I we spent years building that perspective and now I’m delivering that perspective to you with context and this is the context we have wild cats number one

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right and then we have storm watch number one WildStorm these two books are equally important and back during the day back when I first bought these for my local comic shop went home read them I was all team stormat and even going into the sale of DC Comics stormat becoming more of a of a harder Edge uh you know like semi-realistic or semi deconstruction take of superheroes that led into the authority slash also planetary because I do kind of pair those books together I was always team stormwatch and I once viewed the whole

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Arc of stormwatch to be one of the greatest superhero team arcs of all time wild cats always eluded me it never quite captured me I never quite wrapped my head around it I tried uh even with the Allan Moore stuff and later the Joe Casey stuff I enjoyed those versions and those interpretations but I never viewed them as this wild cats kind of goes off into its own tangent uh as a product or as a comic book and never quite returned to like superhero adventure silliness a lot of these things we really do enjoy and

00:04:16
prefer in comics despite what some of these intellectuals and even historians say we do want our superheroes to be fast and loose and fun stormat goes way beyond that into this uh super realistic pseudo realistic uh realm and Wildcats it’s a little bit more complicated to Define where Wildcats ends up uh through the Alan Moore run but let’s just go back in time and let’s just pretend we’re buying these for the first time we’re teenagers we’re going to we’re going to flip through them we’re going

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to we’re just going to admire the artwork I mean the wonderful Scott Clark and the incredible Jim Lee and you give Jim Lee a lot of credit because because how Jim Lee launched these two books and coming from X-Men number one uh these books are comparable to what was happening with Marvel Comics and uncy X-Men or the entire X-Men line at the time now there’s little differences like you know graphic design mistakes or alignment mistakes uh the books sometimes don’t feel as together as some

00:05:23
of the Marvel books did but they do some nice tricky things here to convince you if you kn better at the time if Grandma bought these for little Timmy as we like to say uh grandma would think she’s buying Marvel Comics for her grandson this was wonderfully executed by Jim Lee en Co and WildStorm Productions so let’s just hit that drawing table have a fresh look and let me introduce to you the birth of Wild Storm Productions cheers AKA patters here we go the beginning of a million doller company

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here later to be sold to DC Comics cheers get yourself some of that sippy sippy so since I shot that intro the entire business day came and went the night came and went uh had an obligation tonight so I couldn’t quite get back to the drawing table to go through these with you with all of that it’s now 11:00 on Monday and I’m rushing to get all of this out to you by midnight so it qualifies as Wild Storm Wednesday uh and you know I I kind of already know I have maybe like 30 minutes of rendering time

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for this video uh with a 20 minute upload so it’s going to be tough it’s going to be close so I just want to make this observation wild cats and storm watch share the same universe the the saber Force ballistic right um Cod like codame strike for like Mark sylvestri and homage Studios they have their own Universe also part of homage Studios we have uh the Wild Storm side also has its own universe and then we have like Image Comics as a whole sharing are sharing ideas like in storm watch YoungBlood is

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mentioned by Issue 4 wild cats they fight Young Blood we have pit showing up in saber force uh relatively at the same time of stormat number one so there’s a lot of uh image Universe cross connectivity and then cross connectivity within the studio mates uh that share the same company space what needs to be observed when we we talk about Jim Le’s wild cats is and we’re going to we’re going to do a separate video where we go through the Wildcat number one uh variations because these have I’m going to be all over the

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place here for a little bit these have different trading cards and I have all of those I want to show those off I want to show off some of the the wild cats uh gold the wild cat Jim Lee autograph uh and some of the reprints of wild cat since then but we’re and we we will detail this in the later video but Jim Lee does a wonderful introduction here and the big point is this is Jim Lee on all cylinders post X-Men the quality of his artwork and what the studio is doing around him Brandon Cho writing Scott

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Williams inchor uh Joe Rosas colorist Mike hazler letterer this pound-for-pound pound looks this looks like a legit book this looks like something that would go Toe to Toe with Marvel we made that point about some of these other books and the setup here and the universe setup is quite significant cuz even within issue two we have Lynch Lynch becomes the pivotal member right he’s he’s the Professor Xavier of gen 13 Lynch’s character goes into team seven and then he goes back further that all right so he he

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almost becomes uh like a Chewbacca throughout early Wild Storm superhero mythology but yeah we get this sighting of EMP uh or void here void here uh we have something happening in the Arctic some scientists show up uh she Pops in they have like an orb she’s like you’ll know the power of that orb and boom uh we go back into the future and kind of like something similar happens is one of in one of Lynch’s facilities uh she Pops in she pops out uh he tells his men to draw their guns she’s gone and then it

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goes into uh you know present day and we have Jacob Marlo uh as the New Millennium approaches Jacob Marlo remembers little of his past and sees little hope of his future she saves him cuz he’s about to get rocked and this is what I mean about Jim Lee on all cylinders the flow of his action I really do feel like uh Wildcats one uh it has better action like panels like there’s just some of these panels where it’s just like perfect it’s it’s it’s perfect okay and it’s hard to uh take

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your eyes off of it and these images burn themselves into your mind and for Generation they did until people just forgot and then wanted to to trash the wild cats one effort mostly because of the cartoons K fakers people trash brain and tro brain and tro is a fully capable writer that that establishes characters quickly and there’s plot threads set up later but voy comes rescues saves Marlo and she goes uh your life will never be the same and I love this transition are you you guys ready we turn the page

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amazing wizard ad by the way guys wizard 14 we turn the page and we’re like like we’re what is happening right like what’s really happening here but we see it’s today Jacob wakes up and this is what I mean about the action look at the the angle of this silhouette it’s so freaking simple he gets hit by this taxi again great freaking action but then boom he’s in the elevator and we find out that Jacob Marlo is really doing uh what he was doing prior to Avid saving him and guiding his life uh he

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just likes doing this this is how this guy likes a party but yeah he is the cartoons K fakers came in heavy uh criticizing how some of this is is drawn I have no clue I have no idea Again Jim Lee is on all cylinders quickly establishes that we’re inside of an office building with these uh elevator uh number blocks here look at the detail of the molding all right we know what type of building we’re in just from this detail no no real establishing shot for this building until we get to panel three

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here we pull back and it’s the Halo Corporation look we have like a medium silhouette here essentially medium silhouette here pulled back but we get the scale of this lifestyle now we get the scale of who Jacob Marlo is and at this point he is coming off as more opulent than even Lex Luther was in Superman at this time and technically it was the redhaired Super Lex Luther 2 uh prominent in in those books but we get the this uh you know we cut here and we cut to this bigger sequence here now uh everything

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is involving this orb this orb the plot points of this orb and the plot points established here go into issue more or less issue three into Issue four uh we’re still building when it comes to issue two but we still get some Dynamic gy Le drawing uh this just splash page here it’s like it’s a splash page or isn’t it cuz we have multiple shattered panels yeah and then we look we get down uh they taking elevator because again they’re discussing what is happening with this orb but during this whole time

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we get this idea that they’re just in this like tubular elevator and boom Spartan like this shot alone this shot team leader that’s what this says and he goes yeah we got our uh installing the lace of the a Avon uh EC and blackboxes it’s like I brain and CH is so great with the technical talk talk it’s like Tom clany level technical talk uh that’s what I I’ve always said that the strength of Wild Storm was uh superhero military super uh fantasy superhero military fantasy but

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yeah and then we get this introduction to warblade and Maul and look at this like again like Maul smashes War Blade through the wall into Spartan and he’s creeping around the hole in the wall or like the the crater just punched through it but look at just the motion of this gesture drawing it’s incredible but yeah we get some banter we get some back and forth and then we get uh CH to Peak Bay uh despot our bad guy he’s uh he’s underwater why not put the bad guys on the water we have

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Pike and Pike just kills this rude Italian dude slurping his spaghetti drinking his white he strangles him and just like just face smashes his face into the food again great action here but we know like within a couple panels we know who these people are and look he just like holds it there again like it’s it’s home haunting I’ve said this for a while I really don’t feel like Jim Le’s designs are strong I I just don’t buy it but uh Des Spa here is freaking amazing the colors the there there’s a a mask

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vehicle I remember that had just teal blue yellow and uh it was like a 57 Chevy um you know and purple here but it’s it’s this is eclectic this is wild the tubes the skull head the the the blue flame this is such a wild idea but yeah yeah we get some uh back and forth and then within the page within the page right we get one scene here and then we get another scene we get this transition so we we’re kind of we’re splitting the page but we and you can argue that for this sequence here which

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is kind of not too important but we all know we’re in a different place like we don’t know because he’s he’s zipping around with war kind of cutting deals and and and you know aligning his forces we needed a establishing shot from this panel to to this panel we don’t quite get it but we get a good establishing shot of grifter recruiting you know he’s walking like again right here you can tell he’s walking into a strip club a th% you can tell he’s walking into a strip

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club but he’s recruiting Voodoo great introduction for Voodoo the people there to like we don’t need to read everything we we some great captions about do look she’s the one all right sister of source was the mark this time thought I’ll have to look all night to find her but she’s done the job for me bless her like again character building stuff where are they with this brain and child um criticism I don’t get it they don’t read the books but within two panels we can already tell grifter is

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here to protect her and these are the people he’s protecting her against again it’s hard to Define how we know this face is up to no good the glasses the high collar the the ponytail I don’t know that they wearing sunglasses inside but then again so’s grifter and we get this F and we get one of my favorite panels here where this check you know she’s Zill lot’s opposite they’re demonit but look and she’s a Caribbean or or Caribbean right rum buum I forget I forget how you

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pronounce their uh their their their Koda but I love the motion of this when she just like nukes this guy the motion of the energy grifter we see him pulling the mask on and yeah when he pulls a masar look ready the rock the these guys basically her cohorts here uh it’s tough but they’re armored they have H they have armored weapons on their hands they’re rocking and rolling but we have a post posterized grifter here going over the table the table gets clipped uh it would be would have been sweet if his

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uh the trail for his uh jacket right or his duster also had like a bullet hole to where like he just narrowly missed but then we kind of see someone getting clipped in the back uh a guy and a girl but yeah fight ensues cter uh you know sneaks her Blaster again the action is incredible and then right at the moment of defeat boom uh this would have been nice if it was a little bit more established but if the colorist had light coming from void’s uh teleportation here uh if this was like a little bit pink so we would just get

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this like bright you know like bright shot of the rest of the wild cats coming in and look again action m just comes out on like from top and just like pounds this guy into the pavement uh War Blade drops into position to protect grifter here so the cool thing is like if we were to assume that the girl see like she has her weapon so while they’re dropping down she’s making a move for grifter grifter is not a blasting her again you know mean CU she just took one through the stomach but grifter kind of like drops

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in and just you can kind of imagine her in mid swing but yeah get a little bit back and forth Merlo is enjoying his boys at work and then uh yeah he he gets uh he slips gets snuck up upon but then again dude like this is so freaking sweet it’s it’s economical it saves time but he gets nuked in the head with a blade from no other than zelot and here we go little buddy sister zillock believes she knows everything sometimes I even believe it and then we get a character building back and forth

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between Mero and zelot it is fortun fortunate we meet again Lord M your timely intervention saved the girl and brother grifter I’m sure I could think of a way for you to repay me but after for a little trick I’ll say we’re even but now the demon knites will not rest until they have our head uh like we know like she just came into the story in one one word balloon that’s why I read that out to you guys one word balloon we know their relationship we know her relationship with him and we

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know she is out hunting the demon knites which maybe the one fault of this issue the demon knites are not established enough okay and then uh our our Koda girl nukes everyone and Dan Quail it’s right there so uh Dane Quail does become a plot device by Issue 4 throughout this issue and what I mean about team Lee team Jim Jim Lee is AR in all cylinders his female expressions in this like where’s that one shot of voodoo like look at voodo do in two panels and people would just criticize Jim Lee as just drawing nothing but

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grunt faces but the action here when they grab her like they pull her off stage okay and the long panels here just again it thingss it works I love this stain peed outside the strip club with some of the strip light uh strip club lights going and look at her like she is standing there with weapon ready and she’s just slicing these these people like run into her trap it’s so freaking nice and look look uh gar forget woman I see grifter activate flash suits so it’s like it’s tough man that’s a

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storytelling hole there because we need to see some level of activation between this panel and panel one of this page and then speaking of image uniting everything thing we have our image news reporter here that is featured in all just about all the Image Comics at this point which is awesome and amazing in the back you know we have advertisements similar to what we saw in the majors we have wetworks coming in November W Works doesn’t come until uh a long time from here and we have an advertisement for the comical greates uh

00:24:22
these will be presented on my channel sometime soon but we have uh wild and this back now we have to go to Wild Storm and here we go so no one talks about the actual story of storm watch one I don’t know why they just want to bash it we have a jym Lee cover here that’s better than the wild cats cover just for a team shot right we get the Jim Le triangulation again he heavily used by Mark sylvestri and Michael Turner there’s not triang triangulation here I never saw the UN interrupted image here

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but for this it’s like right we got like a cool grifter uh Voodoo and and Jacob Mero here fantastic but I don’t know what is happening here with with Maul I don’t know what that is I’m always confused I don’t know if it’s if he’s bending or turning his arm but we have Fiji here and we have like more simple Dynamic we have characters facing this way characters facing this way and characters facing that way Battalion just to give you a quick rundown and let’s we’ll go into we

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open with Battalion character building everything here thank you br and CH character building communication and word balloons and captions but we do again uh shooter rules you establish new C characters we need to know who they are and what they’re doing as soon as possible this splash page we and so many of you out there don’t do this with your books I don’t know why but we have hell strike Fiji winter and Diva Diva dies right um is she 25 she dies H strike gets beat up a few issues from here goes into like

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stasis uh but then later uh it comes into in and out of the team but he effectively dies believe he dies in Wild Cats aliens winter becomes a perennial member in different forms uh going into warrant Ellis era so we’re like he’s he’s with the team up until the very end uh Fiji is the only one I’m a little his fate I’m a little tricky on Battalion later Segways like battalion’s journey is we’ll just Lea frog here real quick really Lea frogs into his his brother and his brother is the one I believe it

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starting with issue 26 or maybe even 20 might be 24 24 to 26 but basically effectively takes over the team and becomes like Mr stormwatch but who are they facing off against here well we have a school boss we have uh what’s his Mr worther but yeah we have like the the the school teacher here dressed nice by the way and and uh yeah we we have some terrorist some some superhero super villain terrorist we have razor Kilgore death trap and Slayer I’m in I I’m just again we know who everyone is we’re about to

00:27:45
face off this time you won’t Escape me death trap again we’re World building here we’re we drawing a lot of connections a lot of the dialogue will reference multiple things which we’ll see but you know everyone faces off and really this ends with death trap nuking the school teacher and then we get what we kind of think at the time is a gacha we’re like oh he had a bad dream but this guy’s so dedicated and sexy I mean look at him just look at this guy Wild Storm stains for

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sex but no but we get uh the same nightmare plague plag uh return from sio so he supposed to have been one caption he this was supposed to have been his last mission he’s supposed to go out in glory he doesn’t and now he’s off the team and something happen so we have Synergy she’s his you know EXT trainer EXT trainee she’s coming to see him in the middle of the night and at one time I like when I first bought this I thought this was a jimly issue but I was a kid I didn’t have a good enough eye

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but I was convinced that the way how this issue was drawn was far Superior over this just based on this image of this girl like look at this but they go back and forth and it’s basically like look uh Battalion your brother got into trouble they bring his brother in his brother just tells a story he’s he’s just caught up with these kids they break into a Electronics room electon you like a like a circus City they start stealing stuff they run away from the cops they start blasting the cops one of

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them get shot and uh now his brother being who his brother is they take him in uh storm watch intercepts him but drops him off to his brother and basically they have this heart to heart and again this this is character building look uh even worse a boy is dead tonight I don’t understand you Malcolm I thought that once we got uh once we’ll we once we got in out of East St Louis you have taken the opport opportunity to change your ways uh again like now we know their history so we get into and we see how storm watch works so

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keep in mind we’re deep into the first issue at this point we really haven’t seen stormw watch working we’ve we’ve strictly Ed all of our real estate here to build one character but we got weatherman here again perfect name weatherman doesn’t quite um lasts long he Transitions and Synergy here eventually takes over brother M’s position and yeah I mean we get a little bit of uh here Young Blood Strike Team uh this is skyw watch control uh so we you know we kind of thinks uh young

00:30:46
blood is is either on Arm playing Earth doing something that they’re helping guide or they’re in one of these ships but we jump to a funeral the so now we’re we’re at the funeral of the dude that gets new Mr worther right here so we’re at his funeral and here we go here we go Balian just like man like I I thought my life would be different by now but uh this just sucks and and you know C there being a hot blonde friend and guess what happens because don’t forget we are in a

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comic book The Boys show up and all Breaks Loose let’s go and this becomes a theme later in stormat the brother gets hit the brother gets hit Battalion gets hit and Synergy needs to activate the brother Malcolm when she activates the brother yeah all hell breaks loose be there for 30 dark Omens you bet I was there in 30 Malcolm becomes Comes The Arc of stormwatch starting with this page so when people say that there was no setup there was no story um you know like there was no foreshadowing they haven’t read these

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books they just haven’t this is uh both of these books are designed these are intelligent efforts to get people interested and based on their sales and I’m not just just talking about the launch titles uh storm stormwatch had the longest the the greater the more grandiose run because technically the engineer from stormat into Authority is in the new Superman movie and wild cats became a failed X-Men franchise uh which is tragic but it doesn’t dismiss how professional how well written welld

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designed and executed these books are for a new company and big shout out too for Trevor Scott crate inks Joe chido who didn’t color wildcast but Joe Charo became uh the pallet of Wild Storm and and added all the value to the Wild Storm coloring core uh which really became a big reason to get acquired by Marvel or DC years down the road AKA patters um I’m happy to bring these to you and and thank you for joining me if you’re still with me uh you can always support the channel uh you know give me a like give me a thumbs

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up and uh let me know what you think all is

PETER A DELUCA AKAPD

AKAPAD is a versatile thinker known across Philadelphia, Europe, and even in the vast Multiverse as The Electic One. By day, he excels as an IT Mastermind, assisting individuals, both big and small, with a wide range of simple and complex solutions. In contrast, he is also a talented illustrator, a passionate comic book enthusiast, a creative content creator, and an active live streamer. Additionally, his podcast, “AKAPAD The Film Buff Podcast,” boasts an impressive catalog of over 500 episodes available on nearly every major platform.