(No Spoilers)

All the seeds writer Christos Gage has been planting throughout the Armageddon trilogy, Wildcats, and the World’s End back-up stories finally come together in this last arc for Gage’s Wildcats run.  The Wildcats finally go up against Tao (the villain from Sleeper) and all his plans come to fruition.  This issue is mostly set-up but it’s to be expected for the type of showdown we’re ultimately being led to.  Team 7 has been reunited at last!  The team that is deeply rooted in Wildstorm’s past and is where many of the Wildstorm characters spring from has reunited for first time in years.  For those who don’t know the history, Team 7 was the 7^th team to be infused (successfully) with the Gen-Factor, a extra-dimensional energy that bestowed them with powers.  After learning that the covert agency International Operations (now called Internal Operations) purposely exposed them to the Gen-Factor, Team 7 went rogue and the various members dissimilated into the other teams in the WSU while some went into hiding.  Now they’re back and between them and the Wildcats, they may be the only thing that keeps Tao from remaking the world as he sees fit.

I think Gage did a pretty good job of trying to make this issue as new-reader friendly as he could.  There’s a really nice “Previously on Wildcats” page at the beginning of the issue.  And although we don’t get a roll-call for the Wildcats, we do get one for Team 7.  Although, I think everyone’s name (even Tao’s thugs at one point) gets their name mentioned to get new readers up to speed on who’s who.

One thing I really appreciate about this issue even though it is mostly exposition and set-up at the beginning is that when the action heats up, Gage wastes no time.  He moves the story along at a pace that I didn’t expect and it’s very satisfying that we didn’t have to wait several issues to see what happens at the end of this one.  And there is a HUGE surprise ending for fans of the Wildcats 3.0 series.  I have a feeling Gage is going to go out with a bang here on his Wildcats run.  And there’s still 5 issues left so we’ve got so much more coming!

Synopsis:

http://wildstormresource.wetpaint.com/page/Wildcats%3A+World%27s+End+%2313