Been reading some old Wildstorm series, namely: StormWatch and WildC.A.T.S.
First of all, the art hasn't been bad enough for me to post any here, shockingly. Though there was a pretty crazy panel in one StormWatch issue that was an entire page and the dude's thighs were about 50% of the panel. Another third of the panel were pouches or guns. The only other thing I've noted art wise is that Brandon Choi likes his explosions to go THAK-THOOM.
Second, StormWatch is a great idea actually (an authorized superhero team to take down superpowered villains not vigilantes), Justice League itself has tried it multiple times. Actually each of the spin-offs of StormWatch are great ideas: Team Achilles (a non-superpowered tactical squad to take down superpowers with lethal force), PHD (a police force for superhero crimes like Top Ten but not in a Top Ten world where everyone is powered, but a DCish one, but not as "dark" as Powers), The Authority (obv) and The Monarchy (hand-waved away later by someone saying their drink was spiked by The Doctor, ala Community's "gas leak" season) and even StormWatch in the New 52 was close to a good idea. It's been a Justice League idea back in the 1980s when they operated under the purview of the UN so they could enter member states at will, and similarly in JLA of the New 52 where this idea was tried again and to have a Justice League that could stop THE Justice League, etc. I feel like there's a way to synthesize these ideas and create a book that works in the DC Universe.
WildCATS I'm comparatively not as far into, just the first series so far, I read Alan Moore's series of this a long time ago and enjoyed it enough, but it in context is pretty funny. He comes in, takes a look at the PREMISE of the series and says "fuck that, it's over, the whole war, the whole point of the team, ended centuries ago just nobody told Earth" and introduces all this new stuff, and then he leaves the book and the next set of writers are like "well, we kinda wanted to work with that premise so... uh.. um... some characters need to take some time adjusting to this and others are just quitting" now I haven't finished the series yet so maybe it goes this direction, but some of the stuff Moore sets into the premise and hell the premise itself, could make this a book where the main characters are superhero racists, like if Superman was a Kryptonian supremacist or if he hated Daxamites for some reason, but they're still played as the hero, which could go some interesting places imo, yes, I am proposing a DC Comic in which the heroes are racists, like Miles O'Brien and Kira are towards Cardies
Wildstorm crossovers were lol in the 1990s, especially because the books writers/artists/etc. are all over the place so like 80% of it is useless crap and whoever started it also has to resolve everything while ignoring everything everyone else added into it. World's End, the last Wildstorm crossover is actually pretty great, even the Number of the Beast miniseries is pretty "wow" and they actually do it! They blow up the world pretty much lol Before that the miniseries with Captain Atom (from DC) showing up and screwing up everything is pretty good too.
Anyway, when New 52 came around they tried to hook some of this stuff into the DC Universe, namely the Daemonites, Lord Helspont, Grifter, etc. all showed up in Superman and stuff then just totally disappeared. And part of me, does not disagree with some of it, the characters and the specifics are totally not there, they're often very limited or one note, but some of the ideas could work easily in the DC Universe, especially now that they've well, okay, before they let Bendis kill off all the huge number of agencies in his stupid Event Leviathan thing, once he's done with that they can bring them back and could use some of these to flesh out the HUMAN part of the DC Universe, something that only really a book like Suicide Squad actively deals with regularly (with your rare Gotham set series like Gotham Central since Gotham is the one place humans can still not be pathetic weaklings to the point that they moved Maggie Sawyer there to get her away from doing Superman's paperwork) but a StormWatch revival where only part of the team are superheroes. Actually, this could be a good premise for JSA's return, it could be the old team teaching their legacy heroes like in JSA but it could also have the human parts as part of the team and as sort of a check on the Justice League who have been getting up to some pretty nutty things imo since really Rebirth
I maybe just want more of a sprawling book than Justice League has been for a while, it seems so weird when they confine it to just a few members who both do and don't have their own (multiple!) books and are and are not implied to be in action 24/7/365 (maybe even off Earth for most of that time), especially with half the team being unnecessary except when the plot writes them to be. When there were three Justice League books in the 90's before Grant Morrison revived JLA, they sucked but there was a sense that you had these three teams handling all kinds of things and working when others weren't and then if there was really bad stuff then Superman and co. would get called in. I liked that premise even if the execution was bad. Plus in general I'd just like to revive Blue and Gold and Fire and Ice and so on. I liked Justice League 3000 for its hard swerve into essentially reviving much of that team and also doing the training younger heroes aspect of JSA. Maybe I just want JSA back. As much love as Morrison got for JLA, JSA and its subsequent series were waaaaaay better than JLA and its. There was an actual premise and actual longer plots could be done with the roster not turning over constantly.
Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.