Michael's Long Box: Wildstorm Universe Sourcebook #1 (1995, Image Comics)

Source: ComicBookDB.com

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Welcome back to "Michael's Long Box", where I keep the internet radio tuned to the 90's Alternative station so I'm in the proper mood to read, remember, and review all the books @cryplectibles, @blewitt, @bryan-imhoff, the gang at @clearbluecrypto, and basically the rest of the world would rather forget!

It's been a couple of days since I posted, because I've been possessed with the Halloween spirit, which means watching horror flicks with the wife and making sure all my Fall-themed boxer shorts are clean and ready to go at a moment's notice. So, bereft of anything worthwhile to write about and wanting to make sure those sweet shares of @steembasicincome and @incinboost don't go to waste any longer, I dove into the collection, grabbed a random book, and thought I'd give it a twirl.

My poor unfortunate fingers settled on Image Comics' Wildstorm Universe Sourcebook #1 from 1995. At first I thought I should pick something else, especially considering I had just done a post about the WildC.A.T.s Sourcebook series last week, but then I asked, "Who am I to disturb the universe?", and here we are.

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Image (or rather the various imprints under their tent, like Wildstorm) pumped out a slew of these in the mid-90's, and honestly they're not the shameless cash-grabs you might think. Image was the new kid on the block, and had enough talent on their roster churning out new content it was easy for the new reader to get overwhelmed. Add to this a penchant for throwing these characters into the fray without any backstory (see: Youngblood #1), and a slew of inter- and intra-universe crossovers meant to establish a sort of shared continuity between imprints, and piecing everything together turned into the comic equivalent of attempting to un-mix a bunch of fruit tossed into a blender on 'Liquify'.

Wildstorm Universe Sourcebook actually does a decent job for what it sets out to do, which is provide a glimpse of the heroes, villains, and teams which have appeared under its imprint in a mere thirty-two pages. The quality is improved vastly over the first WildC.A.T.s Sourcebook, with text boxes used to offset the write-ups from the artwork and a far better choice of colors. Here's what I mean. Contrast this picture of Artemis and Delphae from the aforementioned WildC.A.T.s book...

...with this illustration of Fairchild from Wildstorm Universe Sourcebook #1:

Aside from one being drawn by the incomparable Adam Warren and the other by illustrator supreme Jae Lee, it's easy to see only one of these pages gets the job done while the other is still figuring out pants don't go on your arms.

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I've had this book in my collection for years, mainly because at one point in my life I was determined to get hold of everything related to Gen13 I could find, and hey, there's Grunge, Freefall, Burnout, Rainmaker, and Fairchild right on the front cover. How handy!

I have only a passing familiarity with the non-Gen13 characters in here, but that's not a bad thing. The short synopsis written for each person/team does a fine job of explaining what they're all about. If I need to know more, copies of Wetworks, WildC.A.T.s, or other Wildstorm books are among the cheapest and most-common comics on the planet. It's more expensive to not collect 90's Image titles, honestly. :D

I also like that the full-team entries at the back of the book all get two-page spreads. Trying to cram half a dozen mega-powered beings into one standard comic page is a recipe for disaster, and these let the artists spew pencil, ink, and color all over the place. My only complaint is that for the truly massive teams (Stormwatch, for instance, has ten members), it can be hard to figure out exactly who is who if you don't have a good frame of reference. It took me a minute or two to figure out where to start in the "Clockwise" description for the Stormwatch boys and girls as drawn by Renato Arlem and Robert Jones. "Team One" on the other hand, drawn by Alan Davis and Mark Farmer, is presented in a straightforward "left to right" order which is instantly obvious.

Whoops! How did this Tom McWeeney 'Freefall' piece get here?

Two other fun things about this book. First, that cover illustration is absolutely sick with busy-ness, so they kindly included a key to all the people who appear on it on page 32. There are a total of forty different good guys and bad guys throwing down in that illo, and not all of them appear in this sourcebook, so having a breakdown is super helpful.

Better than the character key though is the inside of the back cover, which includes a listing of character appearances up to the April 1995, the month before the Sourcebook hit comic shops. While it's massively outdated now, considering all the cross-overs and guest appearances in other stories Wildstorm properties are guilty of, this was a great way to see who was popping up where. For instance, it might be obvious John Lynch appears in Gen13, but knowing he also showed up in Darker Image plus a number of issues of Deathblow, WildC.A.T.s, WetWorks, and Kindred ensured you can put together his full back-story. Nowadays we have online resources like the ComicBookDB and assorted Wikia pages to collate all this information, but back in the halcyon days of AOL, dial-up, and limited internet access, stuff like this was invaluable for building your collection.

All told, for $2.50, this was a solid investment back in the day and it won't put you out more than about two bucks even today. Sure it passed its prime the month after it was published, and they never produced any follow-up volumes, but chances are if you read comics in the 90's, you are at least passively familiar with some of the characters and artists featured in this sourcebook. And if you missed that magical, chaotic, insane explosion of insanity that was the 1990's, you could do worse than flip through here and see what was going on back in the day. Some of these characters, after all, are still around--DC owns Wildstorm, so you might love a 90's Image character and not even know it!

I, uh...I'm sorry you had to find out this way.

Here's some Adam Warren Rainmaker by way of apology:

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Did you enjoy this read? Was your mind blown in half? Are you prepared with new ammo to take to your favorite comic-themed flame wars?

No? OK, well, I'll still take an upvote. It's the least you can do for wasting my time like this on a rainy Wednesday afternoon. While you're at it, go check out the folks I name-dropped above along with @saywha, @sagesigma, and @goldenage. They're all likely to talk about stuff that's actually useful, as opposed to the nonsense I yank out of my long box.

Long live #comics!