Stormwatch #19

no no no no no no no no no no no no no no

Is this the Stormwatch from Earth-50? Are they truly going to defeat the Stormwatch from Earth Prime? Because I wouldn't be surprised. It seems like the one rule DC has is if two gay characters act on their sexuality, they must be placed immediately inside a gay refrigerator. So technically, Peter Milligan would have killed Stormwatch Prime for allowing the boys to kiss in defiance of Dan DiDio's Anti-Gay-and/or-Blue-Beetle Law. I guess I should stop jumping to stupid conclusions just from the double spread cover. Are these Mad Fold-Ins?

Hmm. Not unless you have to get fancy and do some origami style folding. I wonder if my comic book store will replace my now mangled copy of Stormwatch #19? It was an honest mistake! I'm sure they'll understand if I told them I was trying to get the Fold-In picture to line up.

This issue begins with Jim Starlin having no idea how to write somebody else's characters so he has some beings with their heads on fire initiate the Magenta Timeline where they begin the universe by killing Adam One. This causes Peter Milligan's Stormwatch to stop existing. Also the Demon Knights. Except the Demon Knights were taken over by a competent writer, so they're actually doing okay.

I think the big clue is the name of the timeline: Magenta.

Magenta does not exist as a single color wavelength. It cannot be created with a prism. You do not see it in a rainbow. But line up two color bands from two prisms by placing the blue end of one along the red end of the other and you'll see Magenta light. So Magenta needs two wavelengths to exist. Does the Magenta Timeline require two timelines to exist? Or is the Magenta Timeline simply an imaginary construct by these fire-headed people?

But how does a complete change in the timeline affect The New 52? If this is Earth Prime, then we now have a completely new Earth Prime. Adam One is dead. Therefore there was no Merlin. Therefore there is no Etrigan or Madame Xanadu or Stormwatch. Well, we know that can't be correct because Demon Knights hasn't been suddenly cancelled mysteriously. This could be Earth-50. But what it really is is a gigantic clusterfuck by DC's editors to allow this story to be told (unless it ends up being some kind of alternate reality dream or something. Or Earth-50!). How can DC have no concept of what their own 52 Earth paradigm means? 52 Universes equals 52 timelines. Now each universe could have other dimensions such as The Phantom Zone or The Fifth Dimension or all those various pocket dimensions Lobdell likes to create. But each of the 52 Universes can't have an infinite amount of timelines. Because every timeline is simply another fucking Earth which would mean the DC Universe still has infinite earths.

You know what? Maybe I should read this fucking comic book and see what Starlin does with it before I start pointing to this issue as the comic book that caused DC to fuck itself in the ass.

The Shadow Lords have not been affected by the reality change because they were in Camelot The Bleed. Since The Bleed is conveniently outside of normal time/space, they were left alone to notice that Stormwatch has been erased from existence. They also somehow noticed that this is the twelfth time that this has happened. Can I just give my first "Fuck You" of the issue right now?

Anyway, this Shadow Lord is the Storm King and he's just arrived from inside a Black Hole (I guess that's how you get into and out of The Bleed?) to discuss the erasure of Stormwatch with Storm Control. He calls himself or his ship or fucking who the fuck knows what "The New Skywatch" and they can't be detected because they're in STEALTH MODE!

It's too bad Peter Milligan is gone because I'm fairly certain that he was building up for the Shadow Lords to be Planetary.

A bunch of bullshit I can't be bothered to comment on.

The Shadow King and the teeny tiny secret leader of the new Stormwatch (Ray Palmer?) begin looking at video files of potential Stormwatch teammates. There's Angie the Engineer. And Apollo the Sun Man. And Midnighter the psychopath. And...hey! Wait a minute! These are all the same people that were just erased from existence! FUCK YOU, JIM STARLIN! You fucking coward! Too much work to have to use characters with 380 pages of history behind them? That's one novel's worth of story! And it's mostly pictures! And you couldn't be bothered to study it and base the next Stormwatch on that history? Is this a Stormwatch pattern? Has it really been erased from existence eleven times before this and then restarted?

Wait a second. You're already utilizing these guys? So this new Stormwatch already exists? Or part of it does? Or does Teeny Tiny Leader simply have a Teeny Tiny Treasure and he hired The Weird to protect it so he figured he'd just add him to the group?

Teeny Tiny Mystery Leader has also recruited Jenny Soul from a London Asylum and some guy named Force. So whatever. I guess these are members he already recruited even though he began the fucking conversation seemingly confused about the whole rewrite of reality and Stormwatch not existing and so I guess he had been recruiting for Stormwatch before the Storm King came to speak with him because they didn't exist?

Fuck you, Jim Starlin. Oh, am I repeating myself. Sorry! Wouldn't want that! I should just write a whole bunch of disparate paragraphs that don't have a single thing in common between any of them. That review would be more fitting for this reset of Stormwatch.

Skywatch is the new Stormwatch's headquarters/space ship. It's piloted by an other dimensional frog man.

Why bother with those guys? If they can rewrite reality, they're probably doing it constantly and there's nothing you can do about it or even notice. I guess if these guys can rewrite reality and fuck up The New 52, Volthoom over in Green Lantern should be able to do it as well! I think the only solution to this rampant fucking with time and space is for each of the comics in The New 52 to be its own separate Earth. I actually wouldn't mind that!

The Engineer has been on her first mission beating up some guys named Dee and Dum who apparently haven't realized that they're stepping on some Gotham toes with their schtick. Her mission was to recruit a little guy with a drug problem that might be Stormwatch's Shaman once he cleans up his act. Or even if he doesn't. Nobody needs a sober Shaman.

Well at least these guys can continue with their romance without interruption.

Apparently I missed the allusion that Storm Control's "tiny treasure" was Jenny Soul. I guess I was too busy thinking about how many times I wanted to say "fuck you" to Jim Starlin. So The Weird and Jenny Soul get to hang out and become besties because they're the outcasts of the group. Unless Midnighter and Apollo are the outcasts of the group. Maybe Hellstrike and Force are the outcasts? I think this group is too big! And what happened to Jack Hawksmoor? Was he completely rewritten out of existence? The others weren't. They were just taken away from Stormwatch.

The group has a big meeting where they discover that they're going to have to combat the reality shifting flame headed aliens. Will they defeat them and put the Green Timeline back together? Or will the flame headed jerk-offs find a new champion that is no longer dead because of the timeline rewrite and also because he probably wasn't dead anyway and probably because who the fuck cares about anything any more? World building? Fuck world building! Let's just tell stories!

No, seriously. I'm all for that. But since The New 52 claims to be something more, I'd appreciate it if they stuck to that. Oh, anyway, I was discussing the Magenta Men's new champion!

You know, it's actually refreshing to see Lobo drawn well again and not that horrible mess Liefeld was trying to draw.

Stormwatch #19 Rating: -25 Ranking. You want to start over? Let's fucking start over, bitches! I'm calling it right now! Stormwatch #19 ruined the entire New 52 paradigm. This story is going to open up stories to all sorts of crazy bullshit that will just end in masses and masses of confusion. If this is Earth Prime, The Demon Knights don't exist. I'm hoping this is Earth 50, the Wildstorm Earth, even if Earth 50 was supposedly merged with Earth Prime. Since there are still 52 Earths, I'm assuming that Earth Prime was merged with Earth 50 and Earth Vertigo. But those two Earths still also exist separately. So over on Earth Prime, Dex-Starr can still have his rematch with the Real Midnighter.

This whole timeline reset concept for Stormwatch is lazy bullshit that really fucks with The New 52 paradigm. But if Starlin can tell good, self-contained stories, I'm all for it. But I'll still pretend this is simply Earth-50.