(No Spoilers)

The first trade to Wildstorm’s big World’s End event is finally here.  And it brings back the team that started it all for Wildstorm.  World’s End stems from Wildstorm’s “Armageddon Trilogy” which consisted of Wildstorm: Armageddon, Wildstorm Revelations, and Number of the Beast.  The trilogy brought about an apocalypse caused by S.P.B.’s (Super-Powered Beings) and left Wildstorm’s earth in ruins.  At the end of Wildcats 3.0 the team was based in Los Angeles in the Halo Tower.  Thanks to Spartan, the tower is one of the few remaining structures left and the Wildcats do their best to help survivors by offering refugee in the tower. 

The series does have a shaky start as we are thrust into the events following Number of the Beast without a solid re-introduction of the team.  World’s End as a whole was designed to bring in new readers and the first issue could have benefited from a few more intentional introductions.  But for long-time readers, the action is quick and heavily present throughout the run.  Issues 1-2 deal with the Wildcats going up Majestic who has his own plans for rebuilding a new paradise for the Kherubim race.  3-4 show us a little more of the current landscape as we get some guest appearances by other WSU characters such as Stormwatch P.H.D.’s Paris.  Issue 5 does it’s best to make sense of Spartan’s convoluted origins.  But the highlight is Issue 6-7 which is the first time in a long time that the Wildcats go against their age old nemesis, the Daemonites.  This was the first time that I felt like I was reading Wildcats again.  It was a match-up that was sorely missing from this book for a long time.  Every great team has a great nemesis and in my opinion, Wildcats was never the same without the Daemonites in the book.  Also noteworthy is the first two new additions to the team that we’ve seen in a while.  Jodi Slayton has taken on the mantle of Backlash from her father and Nemesis (introduced in Wildcats: Nemesis) has also joined the team.  It was nice to see some fresh faces on the team.

Overall, World’s End is a solid new chapter in Wildcats history.  Even though the series could have had a stronger start, it really finds its legs by the end of this first arc.  And rest assured that the Majestic and Daemonite conflicts are not so easily resolved and the stakes will be raised when the next collection comes out where everything comes to fruition.