WildStorm
Wildstorm Productions (stylized as WildStorm) is an American comic book imprint. Originally founded as an independent company established by Jim Lee under the name "Aegis Entertainment" and expanded in subsequent years by other creators, Wildstorm became a publishing imprint of DC Comics in 1998.[1] Until it was shut down in 2010, the Wildstorm imprint remained editorially separate from DC Comics, with its main studio located in California. The imprint took its name from a portmanteau of the titles of the Jim Lee comic series WildC.A.T.S. and Stormwatch.[2]
Company type
Its main fictional universe, the Wildstorm Universe, featured costumed heroes. Wildstorm maintained a number of its core titles from its early period, and continued to publish material expanding its core universe. Its main titles included WildC.A.T.S, Stormwatch, Gen13, Wetworks, and The Authority; it also produced single-character-oriented series like Deathblow and Midnighter, and published secondary titles like Welcome to Tranquility.
Wildstorm also published creator-owned material, and licensed properties from other companies, covering a wide variety of genres. Its creator-owned titles included Red Menace, A God Somewhere, and Ex Machina, while its licensed titles included Friday the 13th, A Nightmare on Elm Street, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, StarCraft, the Dante's Inferno game, The X-Files, and the God of War video game series.
DC shut down the Wildstorm imprint in December 2010.[3] In September 2011, the company relaunched its entire superhero line with a rebooted continuity in an initiative known as The New 52, which included Wildstorm characters incorporated into that continuity with its long-standing DC characters.
In February 2017 Wildstorm was revived as a standalone universe with The Wild Storm, by writer Warren Ellis. However, the characters were reintroduced to DC continuity in 2021.[4]
History[edit]
Image Comics (1992–1997)[edit]
Wildstorm, founded by Jim Lee and Brandon Choi,[5] was one of the founding studios that formed Image Comics in 1992. Image grew out of Homage Studios and was founded by artists Whilce Portacio, Jim Lee, Erik Larsen, Rob Liefeld, Todd McFarlane, Marc Silvestri, and Jim Valentino in San Diego, California. All but Portacio decided to become full partners in the new firm.[6] At the time, Lee and Portacio were recognized for their work on various X-Men titles at Marvel Comics.
In late 1992, penciller Marc Silvestri joined the studio to work on the first issue of Cyberforce. Although he worked at the studio, his projects would debut as the work of a new Image "partner studio" firm named Top Cow.[6] Silvestri continued to work out of Wildstorm's studio for about two years. Although WildStorm considered attracting talent, such as John Romita Jr., from the "Big Two", (Marvel and DC), Lee decided to find new talent instead.
Lee's talent search yielded Brett Booth in 1992, and J. Scott Campbell in 1993. Apart from McFarlane's Spawn, Wildstorm produced the most consistently, commercially successful comics from Image. These included Lee's own titles WildC.A.T.s and the teen-hero title Gen13, illustrated by J. Scott Campbell. Like many other Image titles, some of the WildStorm titles suffered from inconsistent completion and shipping, resulting in "monthly" comics coming out every few months. This era produced a number of titles of varying popularity including Gen13, WildC.A.T.s, Stormwatch, Deathblow, Cybernary, and Whilce Portacio's Wetworks.
In late 1993, Lee launched Wildstorm Productions as a sub-imprint of Image. He explained: "During the startup of Image Comics, I incorporated my business activities under the name Aegis Entertainment. As Aegis grew and the marketplace changed, I decided a new name would more accurately define the nature of the titles we produce". In conjunction with the name change, former DC editor Bill Kaplan was brought in to oversee production and scheduling, in an effort to combat the studio's problems with erratic publication schedules.[7]
His attempts to get the studio's characters into other media proved disappointing. A Saturday morning cartoon series of WildC.A.T.s lasted only a single season (1994–1995), while a full-length animated version of Gen13 was produced but never released in the United States. Disney had acquired the domestic distribution rights, but shelved the product. Paramount had international distribution rights, and later released the film only in a few foreign markets.[8] Toys from both titles were less successful than those made by Todd McFarlane, partly due to poor marketing and partly because the McFarlane toys were targeted at a more mature audience. However, they had a big success copying Wizards of the Coast's Magic: The Gathering with their introduction of the card game, Wildstorms: The Expandable Super-Hero Card Game produced between 1995 - 1997,[9] which was later spun off into a crossover set of cards with Marvel. The crossover was the swan song for the Wildstorm game as Marvel's merchandising clout succeeded in pushing Wildstorm's out of the spotlight. Although the timing was right for their card game, they were too early by a year with a Pog game which used the WildC.A.T.s characters they released in 1993.
In 1995, Wildstorm created an imprint called Homage Comics, centered on more writer-driven books. The imprint started with Kurt Busiek's Astro City and The Wizard's Tale, James Robinson's Leave It to Chance (with Paul Smith), and Terry Moore's Strangers In Paradise. Subsequently, the imprint featured works by Sam Kieth, including The Maxx, Zero Girl and Four Women, three of Warren Ellis' pop-comics mini-series, Mek, Red, and Reload, and Jeff Mariotte's weird western Desperadoes.
In 1997, Cliffhanger debuted a line of creator-owned comic books which included such popular works as: J. Scott Campbell's Danger Girl, Joe Madureira's Battle Chasers, Humberto Ramos' Crimson and Out There, Joe Kelly and Chris Bachalo's Steampunk, Kurt Busiek and Carlos Pacheco's Arrowsmith, Busiek's Astro City and Warren Ellis's Two-Step and Tokyo Storm Warning.
1997 also saw a revamp of all the Wildstorm Universe titles, including comic-books by writers such as: Alan Moore, Warren Ellis, Adam Warren, Sean Phillips, and Joe Casey. After this revamp the new Wildcats series, Stormwatch and DV8 took the places of the most popular and most commercially successful comics of the Wildstorm Universe. Wildstorm also made a presentation to Lucasfilm Ltd. in an attempt to obtain a license for the lucrative Star Wars license,[10] but lost to the incumbent Dark Horse Comics.