The Wild Storm #3 Meanderings + Wild Times!

The 3rd issue is here!!!  And from the cover you can probably guess it’s Jenny!  Which Jenny is this?  Might not be Sparks, since she doesn’t have blond hair, but then again, characters have been changing skin color in this version of WildStorm!  How does she play into all of this?

So many questions, so much to look forward to!  What new questions will come up and ones will be answered!?  Let us meander, shall we?

Oh and an update on The Wild Times!

What are Meanderings

In-depth analysis/thoughts, questions, and speculation.

The Wild Storm #3 Variant Covers

The Wild Storm #3 Meanderings

Jump to Jenny’s board!

LINKS

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The Wild Times

I just got my copy of Wild Times: An Oral History of WildStorm Studios by Joseph Hedges which I helped Kickstart!

Can’t wait to read it!

Ooooo and look at these goodies that were included!  OMG!  The WildStorm Expandable Collectible Card Game!  I totally forgot about that!  I think I may actually have a set of these cards somewhere!  I think!?

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The Wild Storm #3 Variant Covers

The text is copied over from the previous preview post, but images are updated!

Here is the variant cover by Jamie McKelvie for issue #3.

My Meanderings

So we know this is Jenny,.. but is it Jenny Sparks or Quantum??  Looks more like Quantum, but if we’re following the old WSU, Sparks come first… hmmm.

Q: but is it Jenny Sparks or Quantum??  Looks more like Quantum, but if we’re following the old WSU, Sparks come first… hmmm.

OR, maybe it’s a reimagined Jenny that has more to do with modern social media tech and being connected and mobile?  Jenny Media?  ha ha  Jenny Link?  Jenny Tech?  Jenny Connect?  Jenny Mobile?  Jenny WiFi?  Jenny Hack?

Here is Jim Lee’s variant cover for issue #3

My Meanderings

This is obviously Void!  Looks cool, love the coloring/lighting.  I’m glad there’s more of a background in this one.  Lee’s first 2 were very barren in the background.

Q: What’s the significance of 92?

Other than the year WildC.A.T.s launch,.. I’m not sure.  Maybe that’s all?   Otherwise, if it’s significant to Void, then, in 1992, there was a missing cosmonaut that returned after being stranded in space.

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The Wild Storm Chapter Three

The beginning is a copy of my original Meanderings from a six-page preview.   Jump to Jenny’s board which has a small update and continue for Meanderings of the rest of this issue.

IO Drama

Oh,.. looks like Ivana might actually want Miles out of the picture!  

Whose name is scribbled under the Shift Lead Monitor??  Father?Anthony?

Oh,.. and how cool is Jenny, able to walk through technology/media.  It’s like Horace Pinker in Wes Craven’s Shocker.  Anyone remember that film?  LOVE IT!  Anyhow, was I right about Jenny….?

DC Sightings: Old-School DC Characters

Ha,.. look at that.  This guy is reading a DC Comic!!!!  Interesting!  Commander Steel is an old-school DC character, an ancestor to the more modern Citizen Steel of JSA!

A man killed by a bullet made by the victim’s own bones.   Wait who is the victem?  The last guy asked about Spica’s launch,…  Could this be a reference to Jack Hawksmoor who may also be reimagined, not as king of cities but king of bones or organic material?  Eh, that might be a stretch.

Oh, more references to the DC Universe or DC Comics,…

“Crime Doctor” an old-school Batman villain! 

“Doom Patrol” as an advertised program.

Jenny Media?

Jenny… Media doing her thing.  

This whole sequence, the one above and the next one are so great!

Oh and MORE DC Comics/Universe reference!  KORD as in Ted Kord, the original Blue Beetle, is on her phone where she watches ….

DC Sightings: Martian Manhunter, KORD Industries

… where she watches a program called Martian Manhunter with this humanoid grasshopper looking alien looking at her phone.  I don’t really get it, but I guess Jenny uses media to travel from device to device so long as it’s broadcasted somewhere else, she can travel to any other device that it’s on.

Is KORD still KORD Industries or is it more like a media conglomerate?

I think in this universe, everything DC related is reimagined somehow.  Familiar names of things from DC Comics are completely different things in this universe.

DC Sightings: Dr. Mid Nite

More DC reference.  Dr. Mid Nite cigarettes.

Q: What’s the significance of Mars Expedition 1955 written on her lighter?  Ok, I don’t know much about missions to Mars in our history, but a quick search led me to think that 1955 was when a book of fiction called Mission to Mars was published.   So is this an indication that in this Universe, works of fiction in “our” universe, is actual fact and history in the Wild Storm Universe?!?

JENNY’S BOARD!!!!

Updated from the preview Meanderings, [ongoing] ….

We see on this page that Jenny is connecting the dots between all these mysterious clandestine organizations and other things!  Can you see anything in there?  Words, photos,..

A bunch of photos of buildings and doors, some drawings, newspaper clippings, documents, maps, and lots of handwritten notes…

 

• HALO
• Photo of huge brown double doors
• 
  • Updated Note: Helix Manfto?
  • Updated Note: Over? and Revision or Division =

• Photo of what looks like an overpass
• Doctors
• Photo of a high-rise building and a ripped document with something circled in red with a single word note with a “?”
• Human Property Schism with clipping and photo of Some symbols
• An aerial photo of what looks like a winding river
• Some documents
• Pris Kitaen knows too much
• Rogue CAT and a photo of an alleyway like the one Grifter is seen in on the cover of TWS #2
• John Colt
• Kenesha Savant
• 1982 and a photo of a warehouse-like building
• 1912? and a newspaper clipping
• Outside New Jersey newspaper clipping
• IO
  
• Black Budgets
• Photo of a doorstep of a residential in a city? but also touching Skywatch’s tree
• Photo of buildings under construction
• Nine Treaties
  • Nine Treaties on Commerce, Friendship, and Taxation?  Treaty of Waitangi – Nine Treaties (look up at Auckland Libraries online)  It’s kinda about treaties made out for native people of New Zealand to make them a British colony.  Some agreed to it and some didn’t.  Nine treaties were written total to go around to get signed.
• Updated: Ubaid Period Landing
  • Ubaid is the name of a prehistoric period 6500 – 3800 BC.  A period where urbanization was beginning in Metsopotamia.  SO, there must have been a “landing” during that time.  So we’re possibly looking at aliens. their technology and influence on the secret history of mankind and the Earth.  Looking back to old-school WildStorm, that could be either Daemonite or Kherubim!
  • SO, there must have been a “landing” during that time.  So we’re possibly looking at aliens. their technology and influence on the secret history of mankind and the Earth.  Looking back to old-school WildStorm, that could be either Daemonite or Kherubim!
  • Here’s a wiki about the Ubaid Period!
• A document and a blueprint of some circular building, area, or object
• Sumarian Expeditionary Force with a photo of some winged being holding something like a walking stick
  • Sumerian is the correct spelling.  By itself, it really doesn’t mean much, not without some context.  Doing a web search is kinda pointless but I could be wrong so I tried anyway, with for the words together and the only thing that came up was THIS.  The relavance must mostly do with where you’d find them geographically.
  • The winged figure,.. is that Swift?  Was she or is she in the Sumerian Expeditionary Force?
• Cherubim Deception and a clipping
  • As in Kherubim?  Um, doing a web search for this brings you to this Chinese site with scantaly clad women but might be a site for skincare products or an escort service,… err.  Since the site is in Chinese, some of the words are translated as random English which happen to have “cherubim deception.”
• 2007/2008 with a document with a chart and a photo of a rooftop and building in the distance
• Post-Extinction Planning
  • Cool thought.  If you search the web, you can find some cool articles about extinction and some on “extinction proceedures.”  Extinction proceedure is doing something, behave in a manner consistently to purposely NOT reinforce a particular response, action, or habit so as to not encourage it and hopefully get it to stop,.. or go extinct.
• End Goals
• Lamplighter 
  • Must be like a codename for someone?  It’s Midnighter’s opposite ha ha.  Instead of being able to know all the possibilities of what you could do, Lamplighter knows all the things you could have done or all the things you didn’t do?? ha ha
  • Update: Thanks to Martin Lel, from the WSU Facebook Group, who brought up that it could be in reference to Lamplighter/Lamplight from StormWatch Vol 2 #4 who was part of StormWatch Zero!
• A map
• Druga Event
  • Hmm, I’m not sure what language this is.  It could be Polish, Spanish, Russian,.. etc… It could possibly be Polish for “2 o’clock.”  It could mean drugs in another language … um, so 2 o’clock event refering to Angela Spica revealing herself in public? ha ha,… or um, it could be referring to some drug event ha ha.  Sigh.  OR, Druga could be a name.
• Hyperstitional Warfare
  • Oh, atleast this comes up with something tangible when searched on the web.  Hyperstition seems to have to do with fiction being or becoming truth.  Here’s one link.  Seems a bit confusing.  Here’s a film about it.  It really makes me think of the Invisibles by Grant Morrision.  It’s not what that books about but the use of hyperstition as warfare does sound like something straight out of the Invisibles.  It’s kinda like magic in that fiction changes or creates reality.  Read this wiki about it!!
• Time Science
• 789216732 5467811314 683233746 542791908 465243890 163777567
  • Hmm what could these numbers be.  It’s next to a map and the words “time science.”  Coordinates on the map?  Coordinates in time?  The numbers are groups by 9 except for the second which has 10 numbers.  In the US, they could be social security numbers, except for the second, which could be a phone number.  Both unlikely.
  • In a web search, a lot of foreign sites are found for phone numbers.
• SKYWATCH
• EPS
  • It could stand for a few things.
    • Encapsulated PostScript which is a graphics file format, 
    • Earnings Per Share which is the amount which is given to a share of a stock from a company’s profit.
    • Extrapyramidal symptoms which are disorders dealing with movement brought on by drugs.
    • European Physical Society which is a non-profit made up of physicists for physics.
    • Educators Publishing Service which is an organization that helps with literacy.
    • Engineering Professional Services which is an organization/business that provides services in engineering and IT specializing in the government, and military market.
    • Floating-point relative accuracy in mathematics.
  • Ok, this can go on forever,.. I’m not gonna describe each one unless it sounds relavant.
    • Electronic Payments and Statements 
    • Engineering Propulsion Systems
    • Economic and Planning Systems
    • Epsilon Parserused in math and coding?
    • Expanded polystyrene which is some kind of recyclable material that seems might be like styrofoam or something.
    • Engineered Polymer Solutions
    • Employment Permit System
    • Enormous Penis Syndrome– ha ha, my favorite.
    • Essential Pregnancy Services
    • Environmental Planning Services
    • Elite Player Squad
    • Energy Performance Score
  • …… as I said, it can go on an on …gonna stop now
• Trelane and a legal document with parts blacked out
• Secret Space Programmes
  • See breakaway civilization
• Escapees
  • Alien ones??
• Photo of a doorstep of a residential in a city? but may be related to IO’s tree ..
• Breslau
  • The Germanized name of the largest city in western Poland, Wroclaw, when it was part of of Germany.  Ok,.. so what’s it significance?
• Breakaway Civilisation
  • Spelled wrong.  Oh, when you search this on the web “secret space program” is mentioned a lot!!  Facinating.  You’ll find all these articles about secret space programs and breakaway civilizations.  Lots of conspiracy stuff.  There is a book called “The Secret Space Program and Breakway Civilization” by Richard Dolan who is a historian who claims that there is a secret space program having to do with UFOs and a “breakaway civilization” seperate from the rest of us who has all this advanced science and stuff that we don’t have.  Ok, this totally could fit in with what Warren is doing here with WS and Skywatch.  Wow, this book is basaed on this guy’s actual lectures.

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Continuing ….

Razor CATs

Ok, that’s new,.. so Razor Covert Action Teams.

Just thought the right panel was a little odd.  Not exactly sure what is trying to be conveyed here by showing Angela’s foot.  Is it supposed to show that IO bag or garment bag by her foot?  Is she trying to push it away?  Is it’s showing she’s not wearing socks or wearing very low rising socks?  Or it is just an artistic choice?

Another panel where I’m just curious what’s trying to be conveyed.  On the left two panels, we see almost the same image, except that the three fly-away bits on her leg move from the up position to down.  She’s messing with them I guess, but she says “Okay. Better.  Especially considering I only put the launch system in to amuse myself.”  How exactly is it “better?”  I suppose we should just take her word for it, but it would make sure sense if it looked broken or malfunctioning in the first image versus being left to assume the fly-aways on her leg pointing up is “wrong.”  Eh, sorry if I’m being nit-picky.

Signature Grifter

Our first injection of classic Grifter!!  Flying through the air while shooting!

This is pretty cool, though I didn’t really get it off-hand.  I had to look closer and figure it out a little.  He quickly shot twice while the canisters were flying at them in mid-air, hitting one causing it to leak red fluid, and hitting the other causing it to fly back to where it came from.  Pretty awesome.  Very nice display of his skill-set!

AH, here’s classic Grifter here with guns in each hand blazing as he’s mid-air.  It’s starting to seem like a superpower ha ha.

Kenesha’s Toys!

This on the other hand.  Is this supposed to be like a slow motion reveal of Kenesha’s pistol?!  At the time, in context, it seems a little odd.  Here on it’s own, I guess it’s kinda cool.

 

Ok, here’s the result of Kenesha’s shooting!  So the bullet has a dual purpose.  It can penetrate like a regular bullet, but it’s also a time-delay bomb!  WOW!  It sorta goes beyond armor piercing as it doesn’t just pierce the armor with its blast, but destroys the target!  Almost seems too over the top!  The delay on the blast might be too much.  The Razor may have been able to pull it off and throw it.  Then again, maybe it’s must faster than I perceived it to be.

It’s so graphic it makes me think of Ellis’s work for Avatar!

One of Grifter’s Powers?

Ok,.. flying around or being acrobatic while shooting has to be a power for Grifter.  He’s literally having dialogue while flipping upside down!  I’m starting to imagine that the time between panels is very very short, like under a second.  So us seeing him upside down in panel 2, is happening almost at the same time as panels 4 and 5 where he’s still flipping ending with panel 7!  Very fast!

Void’s Silver Bodysuit!

And what is this?!?  Glass in Void’s face/head?  Knocking her out??  And is she bleeding white/silver??  OHHHH, a thought just came to mind!  Silver!?!?  Old-school Void had a silver bodysuit right!?!?!  NICE!!

The action on this page is a little confusing to me too, a little more so than before.  So one of the Razors 3 fires another canister, Grifter shoots with two guns, not sure what he’s hit, but I think maybe he hit the canister head-on causing it to deflect up and back at the Razors 3, and then Grifter lands, even though there was no indication that he had jumped or anything.  The motion lines kinda imply that maybe he did a backflip into a very low crouch?    Could’ve been conveyed a bit better.

Wild CAT

Hmm, this confuses me a little.  I understand that a covert action team can be something formed by anyone, but in this world, I got the impression a “CAT” was specific to IO, so when one went rogue or “unaffiliated” themselves from IO, it could then be called a wild CAT.  Here, it seems that a CAT is not specific to IO, that anyone could have one.  Maybe that’s why earlier there was a reference to Razor CATs.  Those are specific to IO.  To say this one is “unaffiliated” doesn’t make much sense to me, as it IS affiliated with something or someone like Jacob Marlowe.  I suppose the distinction should’ve been a hidden affiliation, and not “non-affiliated?”  Maybe it’s just semantics.  Not having logos or obvious affiliation just makes them MORE covert cause you don’t KNOW their affiliation.

With either case, whether it IS a rogue IO CAT or just a CAT that doesn’t display its affiliations, it can be considered a “wild” CAT, they just don’t know which?  Thing is, it’s possible a wild CAT will be identified or branded in the future,.. so then it wouldn’t be “wild” anymore UNLESS they remain “wild” because they ARE rogue IO Razor CATs. OY

Where is Angie goin?  I guess she just wants to get away, ok.  What is she leaving with?  That IO thing I thought was a garment bag by her foot?!?!?  Is it her personal files from IO?  Was this something the wild CAT brought with them with her personal info?  Can’t recall.

Razors 3

I didn’t really talk about this much, but is Razors 3, THESE 3 specifically?  OR, are there other Razors or Razors 3?  In old-school WSU, there were a team of Razors called the Black Razors, but there were also “cannon fodder” army of Razors, Hammers, etc too.  So maybe Razors 3 is like the Black Razors team?

This issue ended way too quickly!!!!!!!!  ARGH!  This issue was too short!

I bet in the next issue, Michael Cray catches up with Angie!!

Other Reviews

5/5 Comicbastards

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LINKS

READ MORE WILDSTORM POSTS!
Meanderings from The Wild Storm #1, #2
Pre-Launch Speculation
Storm Warning: What is the Wild Storm

Other WSU Links
WildStorm Universe on Facebook
WildStorm selections on YouTube
Me on Twitter
WildStorm Addiction Web Site
WildStorm Addition on Twitter
Wild Times: An Oral History of WildStorm Studios on Twitter
Weathering Wildstorm A great blog going through WildStorm Continuity!
Wild Times on Facebook
WildTimes Web site
WildStorm Old Official Twitter
Daarkanjel on Twitter
Daarkanjel on Instagram

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