Broken Frontier

Flushed with their recent success, the Post Human Division is rewarded with a trip to Skywatch. But no one can be prepared for the shocking events about to unfold…

Stormwatch: PHD #8 sees the more street-level members of the PHD team meeting their super-powered colleagues in Stormwatch Prime for the first time. What’s meant to be a day of bonding and team-building though, is marred by tensions, infighting and recriminations between the two groups culminating in a shocking attack on a member of their own. Now all the heroes have to face the possible loss of one of their own and the realization there is a traitor in the ranks with murder in mind.

The basic premise of Stormwatch: PHD centers on a team of human operatives with a mission statement to find ways to take out the super-villains without using fancy powers and abilities. Led by police officer John Doran, and overseen by Stormwatch veteran Jackson King, this pilot unit is a forerunner for potential nationwide divisions in every major city.

Christos Gage has succeeded in creating a disparate group of individuals who, as I’ve mentioned before at Broken Frontier, are hugely reminiscent of the "bruised personalities" that made up John Ostrander’s Suicide Squad. While the idea of a hero team hampered by bureaucracy, budgets and cost-cutting measures is a refreshingly different take on traditional super-heroics, it’s Gage’s wonderful characterization that is this book’s greatest strength. A feeling that none of the characters are safe in the ultra-dangerous world they live in only adds to the tension. The mix of personalities on the team is both distinctive and compelling.

Most importantly, though, this book succeeds in making the Stormwatch world entirely accessible to new readers. I can certainly attest to this because, apart from a couple of years’ worth of The Authority, my knowledge of past incarnations of the book was minimal at best and yet I’ve never felt excluded from Gage’s lively storytelling. For longer-term Stormwatch fans the nods to the past are certainly there but it never feels intrusive or overbearing.

Visually, Andy Smith is very different to preceding artist Doug Mahnke, but given the setting this issue the contrast works extremely well. Mahnke’s superb art on the book has a grittier, rawer feel that suited the more urban adventures of the Post Human Division. On Skywatch though, in a world of godlike superbeings, Andy Smith’s clean and polished visuals work to great effect.

If, like me, you always thought you would rather put a mint condition copy of Amazing Fantasy #15 through a paper shredder than pick up anything related to 1990s Image Comics then think again. Christos Gage is writing one of the finest team books I’ve had the pleasure to read in years. You owe it to yourself to check this one out!