What's Your Game, Vitruvian Man?
So, Miguel Sepulveda seemed to have been the master of covers that have seemingly boring designs, but have such INCREDIBLE balance that they manage to impress me. He's lost his touch though. These past few have been pretty standard cover fare, and this one is probably the worst of the bunch. Everyone feels like they were just plopped down onto the paper with an overly hectic background. And Skallox.... looks like his torso is completely backwards.
Thankfully this decline does NOT extend past the cover. If anything, Sepulveda has seriously improved over his issues of Stormwatch, and it'll be sad to see him go next issue since I think he's really hit his streak. And of course there's PLENTY of debris for him to gleefully depict. But even that doesn't compare to the simply awesome fight scenes involving Midnighter.
In fact, Midnighter REALLY gets the spotlight this issue, and it works well. He was pretty central to the first arc, being a newcomer, but he didn't get a whole lot of character exploration aside from falling for Apollo. And it may seem awkward to have a character focus issue for Midnighter right after he got a big moment in the previous issue, but it works well. We dig deep down into the man he is, and the concerns he has. His bookending moments in the training room have a lot of badass brawling, but in the latter segment, show a haunting image of his subconscious feelings.
Aside from that, he's a LOT more openly flirtatious with Apollo, flirtation that is reciprocated. Can someone tell me if this is accurate for the character post-New 52? It seems a little forced in terms of the sudden change. The increase of flirtation wasn't really gradual, but if it's accurate to the characters before, I can easily forgive it. It just seems like we skipped a few issues of character development.
And speaking of forced, the whole Red Lantern subplot comes from nowhere, and while it serves to highlight some key character moments for Midnighter; it never really pans out into anything bigger, and it still just comes from left field. And another thing. I'm supposed to believe that Stormwatch is just barely getting to know the idea of the Green Lanterns? The Green Lantern who've been around longer than Stormwatch? Who've been on Earth for OVER FIVE YEARS? And the Red Lanterns are something COMPLETELY new to them? I call complete bull. This may be a relaunch, but it's been established that as much of GL's history as possible has remained intact. That mean Stormwatch just somehow completely missed Blackest Night and Brightest Day? HELL NAH.
But at the same time.. Milligan sets up a LOT of nice stuff. I feel like some of it might've been from Cornell's notes, since they've made it clear the ties between this and Demon Knights are continuing to develop, but the execution of the setup is still excellent. Plus, Milligan does kind of a better job at introducing us to the cast than Cornell did (In case you're jumping on with his run, or jumping on from enjoying his Red Lanterns.) After some explosive business goes down in Italy, Martian Manhunter erases the memory from everyone's minds, Jack Hawksmoor talks the city through the task of quickly repairing itself, and Jenny Quantum makes a black hole for travel. To current readers, it comes across a little forced, but when you realize that this is the kind of issue people would jump in on, it works pretty decently.
In Conclusion: 4/5
There's a LOT of good stuff here. I definitely like it better than Paul Jenkins' two issues. It's like Peter Milligan is channeling the good parts of both previous writers. The Red Lantern story comes from left field, and there's a few other hiccups, but overall this is a really solid start to a new beginning for Stormwatch.
