Stormwatch #7

Batman can!

Last issue ended Paul Cornell's run on Stormwatch. I wonder if Demon Knights and Stormwatch will retain the connection that Cornell was setting up? Or if this Jenkins guy will just drop the whole idea that Merlin formed Stormwatch centuries ago and we'll never hear another word about that? Writers are so narcissistic. They always have to write about their own ideas instead of taking creative input from other writers!

Does anybody out there remember DC Challenge? Holy shit what a train wreck that was! I think I have it lying around somewhere. I should do a special commentary on that series. It was, ostensibly, a round robin comic where a new author would take over the story each issue after the previous issue ended on a cliff-hanger. But most of the authors just started new storylines when their issue came out and I believe many of them just ignored the cliff-hanger endings of the previous author! It was absolute batshit.

Sorry! I didn't mean to compare Stormwatch to DC Challenge! That was just a random aside! Stormwatch is much better! But maybe not this issue! I don't know since I haven't started reading it yet! I'll start reading it next paragraph.

Idiot! When it goes crazy, you're walking through radiation! Sheesh!

The opening scene is in the Ukraine in, I guess, some sort of nuclear disaster. I don't know why the guy with the Geiger counter would think it's going crazy for no reason! It goes crazy for a very specific reason, stupid! Read my caption! Maybe that guy thinks it is supposed to detect Firestorms. So it goes crazy and he looks around but doesn't see anything, so he ignores its readings. I hope he dies!

OH MY GOD! I TAKE IT BACK! I TAKE IT ALL BACK!

I think I have a super power that allows me to curse people with my words! One time, I was walking home from Fred Meyer. This kid is riding towards me on his bike on the sidewalk and he's talking on a cell phone. But he's got the cell phone in his hand that would pull the back brakes. So as he passes me, I think, "I hope he fucking crashes." And immediately after that, I hear a loud smash! I turn around and he's splayed out on the ground. Serves him right! He probably panicked and pulled the front brake and lost control! Another time, I cursed my cousin with the hiccups and he had them for practically a whole day! So don't piss me off!

Back on board the Eye of the Storm, the ending to Grifter #7 is immediately spoiled for me as I learn that Midnighter "uses enough explosives to kill it" and then the editor gives me a note to read Grifter #7 to find out what they're talking about. And in the editor's note, it says Grifter #7 will be on sale March 14th. So even if I wasn't behind in my reading, this comic would have spoiled Grifter for me anyway! Thanks, DC!

Well, I guess if Midnighter is on a mission, he's going to win out and kill the enemy in an exaggerated fashion. So I guess nothing was spoiled. As soon as I saw Midnighter in the comic, I would have known what was in store for the antagonist.

Stormwatch detects some weird shit happening at the Chernobyl site so Apollo heads down to check it out.

Looks like the artist used the pictures from the site I linked to as reference. Every couple of years, I find myself rereading that site. Simply a fantastic piece of work.

Something weird begins to happen to Apollo (I think it might be the Gravity Thieves!) and the ship's alarms go off. Engineer appears to yell at Midnighter and bitch about being leader and tell her everything and blah blah blah. Shut up already! She's got a serious case of I told you so's!

Oh! Speaking of "I told you so", I remember seeing this video from one of those crazy Fox television shows about people nearly dying or some stupid shit. And it was of a group of Australian school kids out hiking with some teachers. And the teacher is filming a couple of girls out over a canyon walking along a thin and dangerous trail. So you hear him as he's filming say, "Don't go over that way, girls. It's too dangerous." And then one of the girls slips and falls! And he follows her fall to the bottom of the canyon with his camera while shouting, "I told you not to go over there!" Man, what a dick!

So The Engineer sends Jack down to the Ghosttown to speak with it. I can't imagine that's going to go very well! It may have been a city once but now it's definitely just a dead place. The way Stormwatch has Jack speak with the Avatar of the cities, though, means he'll probably speak with a radioactive mutant beast creature. I think Jack should arrive and just start dying from radiation sickness himself since that's really all the city is at this point. Just a bloated mass of wood and stone covered in radioactive fallout.

BLAH BLAH BLAH RANDOM QUANTUM THEORY BLAH BLAH BLAH

Martian Manhunter recognizes the things attacking Apollo and takes Jenny Quantum down to save Apollo with a bunch of jargon. It works! They fluctuate the Feynman State and turn space/time back on itself while removing the higher supercharge particles! But first Jenny had to reverse the polarity of the quantum field, of course! That way, she was able to save Apollo AND capture one of the creatures in a Compton scatter field! Easy peasy!

No idea what happened to Jack Hawksmoor, though.

Oh, there he is. Why aren't Hiroshima and Nagasaki taking care of Fukushima as well?

If Jack Hawksmoor is the God of Cities, I really wish he would become a city and not have the cities' avatars become human. Why's everything gotta be so Homocentric? (Look at how I'm avoiding an Apollo and Midnighter joke here because I'm not in Junior High anymore!) Anyway, Jack finds out that Pripyat thinks he's been attacked by demons. Well, that should help Stormwatch! Jack can return to the ship and say, "Hey everyone! I found out the problem! The city is being attacked by demons!" And then the rest of the crew will step to the side and Jack will see that they've already caught one of them. And then he'll look down at his super-callused feet and mutter, "Oh."

But before Jack can return, the Daemonite ship (which they refer to now as "Charlie" although they really should be calling it Shodan) tries to kill the creature. The creature reacts oddly to being killed.

It's yelling, "Guacomole!" in Old Portuguese.

The ship is unable to kill the creature and instead it escapes and zaps Apollo. Both Apollo and the creature disappear. The Engineer decides it's time to yell at someone else and she turns on Martian Manhunter since he seemed to know what the things were.

"What are those things!?" she yells! See? That'll get some answers!

How much do you want to bet they find a way to stop them? Hey! Here's a suggestion! Use whatever was used to stop them the other time they came to our universe!

These Gravity Miners are an ancient enemy of the Martian people. Even though they usually sit in a parallel dimension not causing anybody harm. I mean, except for that one time. And they destroyed countless galaxies that one time. And since Mars wasn't destroyed, they didn't destroy our galaxy. So I'm really wondering how they're an ancient enemy of the Martian people?

Stormwatch Issue #7 Rating: No change in rank. This issue was more fun than not fun! Is that a decent review? I know I didn't pun appropriately like a real reviewer. "Reading Stormwatch is more fun than watching a real storm!" No, no, that sucked. "The Tale of the Gravity Thieves really sucked!" Maybe this issue would have received a rise in the rankings if it wasn't for all the techno-jargon. Some of it is okay because we know the whole situation is bullshit. But geez! He just wouldn't shut up with it! I'm pretty sure he just kept opening a Quantum Physics text book and randomly pointed to different words for his explanations. But none of that really took away from the book! The MAIN reason it didn't get a Plus One rating was because it ended with one of the Stormwatch team saying a major threat was coming and there was no way they could prevent it. Oh, come on! Stop giving up already! I bet by the end of the first page of Issue #8, you'll begin to have a plan! And I'll bet Jack Hawksmoor will be behind it! And I'm not even psychic!