Though the book is still shaky, largely due to artistic instability and a poor choice for lead artist, Micah Ian Wright's scripts for Stormwatch continue to grow stronger, and it's clear that there's a great book here. Case in point, this issue, a single-issue story which takes the Twilight Zone episode "It's A Good Life" and imagines how a military response to the problem might go, which winds up serving as not only a character spotlight for a couple of the characters but a good general overview of how the team works and how they relate to others. Portacio's artwork is still a bad fit for the book, but it's generally a lot more readable than usual this time, and the strength of the stories has me looking forward to future issues (especially the ones with guest artists) all the more.
The guy who can rewrite reality, and who does so because he's something of a schlub, is something of a cliche in science-fiction and comics. In addition to the aforementioned Twilight Zone episode, I'm reminded immediately of Marvel's Molecule Man, and there are others as well. However, there's still something frightening about someone like that with control over your reality, and Wright does some effective scenes of how dangerous the guy is, especially when he turns one of Stormwatch's most efficient killers into a naked guy late for his menial job with one tossed-off thought.
And this is certainly the first time I've seen a special ops team sent in to deal with this kind of problem. One of the things I like about Stormwatch is that Wright doesn't emphasize just the force aspect of military operations, that he spends time on planning, political concerns and sneaky maneuvers as well. In the end, this guy is taken out not by a show of force (although there is some physical violence) but by some quick thinking and clever manipulation by a field operative. I also enjoyed that she got the time to do her job thanks to a politically incorrect (but highly satisfying) use of sniper firepower that prevented interference by overzealous authorities.
Whilce Portacio still wouldn't be my first choice for this book (he wouldn't even make the top ten), but I have to admit that the art this issue is not bad, and in some places it actually looks pretty good. The designs for Aaron Williams's re-imagined town are pretty solid, and the strange anatomy and weirdly dropped backgrounds actually looks intentional in some spots, reminding me of Sean Phillips's work on Wildcats to some degree. Mind you, there's still not enough consistency in the characters, making it twice as hard for Wright to identify them on the page.
Fairly early on, I had decided that Stormwatch: Team Achilles wasn't going to be for me, because the art wasn't clicking at all and the stories weren't so great as to overcome the serious artistic problems. However, with increasingly strong stories and rumors of an artist change in the future, I've become a lot more interested, and I would certainly pick up trade paperbacks of the series if Wildstorm were inclined to give it that treatment.
This issue also features part one of the return of The Authority, and while I don't have much interest in it at this point, I will admit that Robbie Morrison and Dwayne Turner turn in a pretty solid rendition of the team, and those who have been waiting anxiously for the return will probably not be disappointed.
