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THE ESTABLISHMENT #3
"Doomwatch"
Recommended (8/10)
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DC Comics/Wildstorm Productions
Writer: Ian Edginton
Artist: Charlie Adlard
Colors: Wildstorm FX
Letters: Jenna Garcia
Editor: Jeff Mariotte
Price: $2.50 US/$4.25 CAN |
This issue we
meet a few more of the Establishment, and although Edginton is keeping us a bit
in the dark about the characters, he's given us enough to know their mission and
to interest us in several of them, as well as an interesting point-of-view
character in Charlie Arrows. This issue is the one in which the scope increases,
as we go from fighting an alien invasion in a seaside town to two vastly
powerful groups manipulating pawns against one another, but oddly it still works
even with the change of scale. It also has the benefit of featuring some
fantastic artwork by Charlie Adlard, who is doing some of his best work here.
There's a lovely mixture of
the high concept and the down-to-earth in this book, and it makes it a fairly
intriguing read. The explanation of just where Arrows was went over my head a
little bit, but the depiction of his own private hell was creepy and effective,
and the characterization of his rescuer is terrific. Along with the really
amusing "guy with his hands in the dead guy" and the eerie super-children, I'm
starting to get a feel for the Establishment characters, and I like them. Mind
you, Edginton could be doing a damn sight better in introducing them by name.
Adlard is really the star of
this particular show. He's got to draw elegant meeting rooms, weird subspace
realms and monsters, imaginative starships and cancer-ridden villains, on top of
designing the odd-looking Establishment characters. He pulls it all off with
style and skill, creating characters who are distinctive without resorting to
gaudy costumes and depicting a strange but oddly believable world in the
backgrounds.
Edginton, meanwhile, is
making use of the Wildstorm universe in much the same way that Warren Ellis has
done. He's tying in to the Daemonites, but he's modifying them slightly to his
own ends and has made them a much more effective foe as a result. He's hinting
at secret histories that didn't exist before, but make perfect sense in context
with the rest of the universe. And most importantly, he's telling a story that
has some mysteries but he's leaving plenty of clues so the readers can follow
along.
The Establishment probably owes its existence to the popularity of The Authority, but it's not a spinoff. It's a book that takes a completely different direction, and it's as much a "new wave" super-team book as Wildcats or The Authority were.
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