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.
