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The History of WildStorm Productions

The Image years

WildStorm was one of the founding studios that joined together in 1992 to form Image Comics. It grew out of Homage Studios which was founded by artists Scott Williams, Whilce Portacio, Jim Lee, and Joe Chiodo in San Diego, California. Lee, Williams, and Portacio had gained notoriety from their work on various X-Men titles at Marvel Comics including their work on Uncanny X-Men #267 which featured the second appearance of the popular character Gambit. In late 1992 penciler Marc Silvestri joined the studio to work on the first issue of Cyberforce. Although he worked at the studio, his projects were to debut as a new Image imprint named Top Cow. Silvestri continued to work out of WildStorm's studio for about two years, then moved his staff up to Santa Monica so that he could be closer to Hollywood. Although there was some thought of grabbing talent from the "Big Two", (Marvel and DC) such as John Romita Jr., Lee decided instead to find new talent.

Lee's talent search yielded Brett Booth in 1992, and then J. Scott Campbell in 1993. Apart from McFarlane's Spawn, Wildstorm produced the most consistently commercially successful comics from Image, including Lee's own titles WildC.A.T.s and the teen hero title Gen¹³, illustrated by J. Scott Campbell. Like many other Image titles, some of the WildStorm titles were plagued with inconsistent completion and shipping, resulting in "monthly" comics coming out every few months. This era, however, produced a number of titles of varying popularity including the aforementioned Gen¹³ and WildC.A.T.s, StormWatch, Deathblow, Cybernary, and Whilce Portacio's Wetworks.

Attempts to get his studio's characters into other media were disappointing. A Saturday morning cartoon series of the WildC.A.T.s suffered from poor production values, and lasted only a single season, while a full-length animated version of Gen¹³ was produced but never released. Disney, who had acquired the distribution rights, later released the film only in a few foreign markets, leaving Jim Lee frustrated. Toys from both titles were less successful than those made by Todd McFarlane, partly due to bad marketing and partly due to the fact that the McFarlane toys were targeted for a more mature audience. However, they had a big success copying Wizards of the Coast's Magic: The Gathering with their introduction of the Superhero card game, Wildstorms, which later spun off into a crossover set of cards with Marvel. The crossover was the swan song for the Wildstorms game though, as Marvel's merchandising clout was able to push Wildstorms out of the spotlight. Although the timing was right with their card game, they were too early by a year with a Pog game which used the Wildcats characters that they released in 1993.

In 1995, WildStorm created an imprint named Homage Comics, centered around more writer-driven books. The imprint was started with Kurt Busiek's Astro City and The Wizard's Tale, James Robinson's Leave It to Chance (with Paul Smith) and Jeff Mariotte's Desperadoes (with John Cassaday). More recently, the imprint has featured works by Sam Kieth, including The Maxx, Zero Girl and Four Women, and three of Warren Ellis' pop-comics mini-series, Mek, Red and Reload.

In 1997, Cliffhanger debuted a line of creator-owned comic books which included such popular works as J. Scott Campbell's Danger Girl, Joe Madureira's Battle Chasers, Humberto Ramos' Crimson and Out There, Joe Kelly & Chris Bachalo's Steampunk, Kurt Busiek & Carlos Pacheco's Arrowsmith and Warren Ellis's Two-Step and Tokyo Storm Warning.

This year also saw a huge revamp of all the Wildstorm universe titles, including such prominent comic book names as Alan Moore, Warren Ellis, Adam Warren, Sean Phillips and Joe Casey. After this revamp the new Wildcats series, Stormwatch and DV8 took the places of the most popular and most commercially successful comics of the Wildstorm Universe.

The DC Years

As sales of comic books had been declining since 1993, Jim Lee started to look for a buyer in the mid-1990's. The result was the 1998 acquisition of Wildstorm by DC Comics (effective January 1999). According to DC, this was meant to "strengthen both Wildstorm's ability to expand its editorial goals and diversifying DC's output". Jim Lee said that he was lucky that it was DC and not Marvel that bought him out, with consideration to Marvel Comics' bankruptcy during the same period. DC's acquisition of WildStorm allowed the two universes to interact with each other, and the result was that characters from each universe would soon make appearances in each other's titles.


1999
1999 would be a hallmark year for Wildstorm. Several titles were launched, including The Authority, a dark, violent, superhero comic, whose heroes had total disregard about things such as honorable battle or not killing their opponents. Its goal was only in making the world a better place. Warren Ellis created The Authority from the ashes of Stormwatch. He would write its first 12 issues before handing the series over to Mark Millar. The Authority fused the hope and striving of the Silver Age superheroes with a cynical look at humanity. The fight between the heroes and the corrupt parts of humanity would lead the series into the 2004 Wildstorm crossover, Coup d'Etat, where the Authority would take control of the United States of America. Ellis and artist John Cassaday would create Planetary, a story about explorers of the strange. This would be an experiment in inter meshing a look at pop culture, comic book history and literature with Cassaday's unique artwork.

Around this time WildStorm would launch a new imprint titled, America's Best Comics. This was specifically to allow Alan Moore to create a number of comics based on his own ideas. The line has been widely lauded and awarded, giving life to titles such as Promethea, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Tomorrow Stories, Tom Strong and Top 10.


Experimental Phase
"Eye of the Storm" was launched in 2001 as an experiment. Most of the Wildstorm imprint was remade into mature readers superhero comics. Joe Casey kept writing Wildcats, although it became Wildcats 3.0. The new version would be penciled by Dustin Nguyen. Gen 13 was relaunched with a new first issue but its spin-off 21 Down remained an all-ages comic. The former was written by X-Men's Chris Claremont, and the latter by Jimmy Palmiotti and Justin Gray.

After Point Blank, a mini-series starring Grifter, Ed Brubaker carried on with the same ideas and launched the critically acclaimed Sleeper which was set in the Wildstorm universe. The year was also the start of Warren Ellis's Global Frequency. The rights for Global Frequency were bought by Warner Brothers in 2004, and a pilot for a TV series for the WB network was made but the show was not picked up. The pilot however was later leaked to the internet.

The Authority, then relegated to Robbie Morrison, starred in a one-shot called "Scorched Earth" after which an initial "Eye of the Storm" story was published and finally a new ongoing series. It was that series that featured a storyline that lead into the Coup D'Etat crossover between "Eye of the Storm" books Authority, Sleeper, Stormwatch: Team Achilles and Wildcats Version 3.0. Stormwatch was remade into Stormwatch: Team Achilles, an anti-superhero book featuring Black Razors-leader Ben Santini and his group of human soldiers in the Wildstorm Universe.

Two anthology "Winter special" books were also published as part of the imprint, but sales floundered despite critical acclaim. Some titles were taken down early on, like Gen 13 and 21 Down which was left without a promised second season. Thus, except for Sleeper that got its second season published with a definite ending, most of the line was canceled two years after its foundation. Wildcats 3.0 was the title fans most derided DC for canceling, considering writer Joe Casey had stated that he planned an organic ending for #40. Meanwhile the already canceled, Stormwatch: Team Achilles' last issue was never published due to writer Micah Wright being caught in a lie about his military history and being blacklisted as a comic writer since.


Licensing acquisitions and reorganization
To this day, WildStorm has been varying its publishing with licensed properties, such as A Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday the 13th, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and World of Warcraft, and with original graphic novels from the pens of such famous writers as Kevin J. Anderson, John Ridley, and David Brin.

In 2004, WildStorm revamped its system of sub-imprints. The company properties fell under the Wildstorm Universe imprint, the creator-owned properties fell under the WildStorm Signature Series imprint, and all the licensed properties fell under the WildStorm imprint.

In its post-Eye of the Storm state, WildStorm has published fewer titles centered around its Wildstorm universe, Majestic, whose series grew out of his spotlight in Superman titles, and Wildcats: Nemesis were notable.


Worldstorm
In August 2006, WildStorm consolidated all its output under a single "WildStorm" label to simplify the imprint for consumers and retailers. This was followed by what was billed as a "soft reboot" to the Wildstorm Universe entitled "Worldstorm". The event began in a crossover called Captain Atom: Armageddon which saw Captain Atom from DC Comics interacting with characters from the WSU. Several of Wildstorm's titles which hadn't had a series in a while returned. The line included a new series for Wildcats, The Authority, Wetworks, Gen 13, and Deathblow. A new incarnation of Stormwatch called Stormwatch P.H.D. (Post Human Division) was also created as well as a solo series for Midnighter of The Authority. The line was rounded out by a new title that was retroactively included into the Wildstorm Universe, Welcome to Tranquility.

Unfortunately, the two flagship titles-Wildcats and The Authority, experienced major delays and ended up only releasing one and two issues respectively. The other titles kept to their schedules but many fans left after the two flagship titles fell through. Each of the series that launched eventually ended or were cancelled with only Gen 13 and Stormwatch P.H.D. left.

In 2007 the Wildstorm universe became Earth-50 of the new multiverse in the DC universe.


World's End
In 2008, Wildstorm released it's "Armageddon Trilogy" which consisted of the mini-series Wildstorm: Armageddon, Wildstorm: Revelations , and Number of the Beast. This led into the company-wide storyline entitled "World's End". The story brought back the two flagship titles-Wildcats and The Authority which had been absent for almost two years. It also continued the Gen 13 and Stormwatch P.H.D. series which began during Worldstorm.

News:

• CBR: New York Comicon 2009: WildStorm
• CBR: CCI 2008 WildStorm
• CBR: Wizard World Chicago 2008: WildStorm
• CBR: Wondercon 2008: WildStorm
• CBR: CCI 2007: WildStorm
• CBR: Wizard World Philadelphia 2007: WildStorm
• CBR: Wondercon 2007: WildStorm
• CBR: Wizard World Chicago 2006: WildStorm
• CBR: Wizard World Philadelphia 2006: WildStorm
• CBR: New York Comicon 2006: WildStorm
• CBR: Wondercon 2006: WildStorm