(No Spoilers)

Collected here is Christos Gage’s second arc since World’s End came to the Wildstorm Universe.  After taking the first six issues to re-establish the team and set up some dilemmas for them, Gage takes this last arc and focuses it into two sections.  One is dealing with the Wildcats finally going to Hawaii and confronting Majestic about the little empire he’s created out there.  The other deals with Lord Defile and his Daemonite forces leading a siege on the Wildcats’ headquarters, The Halo Building. 

I think it took Gage a little while to hit his stride on this Wildcats run.  The first arc didn’t seem to have a definite focus until toward the end where Lord Defile and his Daemonites showed up.  But having them show up at the end of the first arc ended up being a tease for more of Defile and the Daemonites in this story arc.  In my opinion, the Daemonites have been absent from the Wildcats books for far too long.  They were established as the Wildcats ultimate foe since the beginning but there was a time when they fell by the wayside.   But Gage makes them a definite threat again here, especially considering the current state of the world. 

One of Gage’s strengths through-out his run is his uncanny ability to keep all of Wildstorm’s history straight and make it relevant to the current stories.  Gage loved pulling obscure characters from Wildstorm’s past and giving them cameos during his run.  There were many Easter Eggs for long-time fans.  Be on the look-out for an old Stormwatch villain and a couple of nods to Wildcats 3.0. 

As for the story, it starts a little slow but builds to a great conclusion.  He really makes Majestic just as big a threat as the Daemonites.  But Majestic’s struggle to keep from hurting the other heroes really plays off some fears the team has.  The Wildcats have always been the underdogs in Wildstorm.  With teams like The Authority out there, it’s amazing the Wildcats have survived what they have if you based it solely on the power levels of its members.  Some people complained that the team was the least affected by World’s End.  But by the end of this arc, Gage makes sure that is not so anymore.

An odd addition to this trade is the Worldstorm #2 issue.  First off, this issue came out in March 2007, over a year before World’s End even began.  Secondly, it was part of the Worldstorm storyline at the time which spun out of Captain Atom: Armageddon.  It contains two short stories and collected with these other issues acts as a “how did these heroes get here” addition.  The first story is a Voodoo story written by Keith Giffen and basically shows how Voodoo and Maul broke-up (and issue addressed in Gage’s run).  It is a surprisingly dark take on the character and was a little disturbing when I first read it.  I’ve just never seen anything else with the character to support the actions she displayed here (although I don’t remember how dark Alan Moore’s Voodoo mini-series was).  The second short story is by Christos Gage and shows how Jodi Slayton became the new Backlash.  It was a story that was retold in Wildstorm Revelations #1 so again, it’s weird that it would be collected here.

Overall, this was an improvement on Gage’s first arc.  A more focused story led to more time for characterization and some big moments towards the end.  At a convention panel in 2009, Gage promised things would get worse for the team in this second arc and it did.  But in this case, that was a very good thing.

Solicitation:

http://www.dccomics.com/wildstorm/graphic_novels/?gn=13671