The final chapter of Stormwatch suffers from not being about Stormwatch. Sorry if I'm sounding like a broken record, but Ellis clearly has nothing but contempt for the characters by this point.
This, for me, is probably the low point of Ellis' Stormwatch. The basic problem is that Ellis is clearly bored of writing the book. On the one hand, fair play, if you're bored you're bored. On the other, why keep writing it? It also doesn't make for a spectacular SW collection. Both of the stories contained within do have their merits, don't get me wrong, it's just that if you've got here on the back of the tight SW characterisation of the previous three books, you're going to be disappointed by this one.
Just a warning, I've tried to steer clear of spoilers for these reviews, but "Change or Die" isn't a set of stories that can be discussed without them, so read on with that proviso.
The second volume of Warren Ellis' excellent Stormwatch run contains arguably the weakest set of stories from the first volume. This is relative, of course, and it's still good stuff. The first three episodes focus almost entirely on single characters.
This is
really where Warren Ellis the mainstream visionary got started. While
his Excalibur run undoubtedly showed his skill for humanising and revitalising
characters, the freedom given by Wildstorm allowed him to remould
a whole series in the space of an issue. When Ellis arrived, Stormwatch
was pretty much a dying book. It was never one of Image's biggest hitters
in the early days and rapidly became one of those books no-one cared
about. The series was hampered by having to keep in line with the 'Images
of Tomorrow' gimmick put in place early in the run, and then by a ludicrous
number of new characters thrown at the book by desperate writers.
This book contains the first 23 issues of Captain Britain's UK weekly series. It's all on high-quality paper, with nice forewords from Chris Claremont and Herb Trimpe, and even a replica of the mask given away with Captain Britain #1 (though whether you feel like cutting this out and ruining your book is down to personal taste). The art benefits from being squashed down to US-format sized pages too, looking much more detailed than it does in t he original comics, and the cover for each issue is faithfully reproduced.
