WildC.A.T.s Compendium One

by Jim Lee, Travis Charest (Illustrator), James Robinson

BETTER LIVING THROUGH VIOLENCE!

Spinning from the pages of BATMAN comes the senses-shattering new series! The HALO Corporation has gathered a motley crew of operatives, led by Cole "Grifter" Cash, who are going to make the world a better place...no matter who they have to kill!

Working in the shadows of the DC Universe, this new covert team has been tasked with gathering an elite group of scientists for the first phase of their plan…but the Cats’ mysterious leader, Void, might have other plans!

Genres: Dc Comics

952 pages, Paperback

Published November 5, 2024

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.

Jim Lee is a Korean-American comic book artist, creator and publisher. After graduating from Princeton, he decided to attempt illustrating comic books, and met with success. Lee's distinctive, crisply hatched line art style and rigid, idealized anatomical forms established a new stylistic standard for superhero comic-book illustration and reinforced a popular trend away from brushed to penned inking in the late 20th and early 21st century. Lee is currently one of the most successful artists in American comics.

He has received a great deal of recognition for his work in the industry, including the Harvey Special Award for New Talent in 1990.

Reviews

[Sean Gallagher · Rating 2 out of 5]

Sometimes great art is ruined by every excess of terrible writing and drawing decisions that was prevalent in the 90s. Gritted teeth. Clenched jaws. Quips. Swearing. Gore. Violence. Tiny costumes. Splash pages. Computer coloring. Contemplation and rumination about the evil out there in the world, which can only be settled with big guns and ever bigger muscles and laser blasts. Jim Lee may have thought that his ideas were too edgy for Marvel when he left to start Image but I think they saw that his ideas were dull cliches that could be summed up in three words: Boobs, bang, bang. And my god, the dialogue, it’s painfully obvious Mr Lee was never cool growing up and only interacted with society through 80s action movies but come on, you don’t need to prove this. Grifter was the worst. I guess the grift was on us to ever think this Gambit knockoff was ever kewl in saying things like, “what a rush!” Or “we can do this easy way or the hard way.” If I wanted to give Mr. Lee the benefit of the doubt, he got a little too far over his skis thinking he could do all of it and sometimes you need the genius of Chris Claremont to tell a story. Though ironically the Claremont issues were meh at best yet compared to everything else, they were brilliant schlock. It was a fun nostalgic revisit but alas this proved you can never go back and you never should.

[Sebastian Lauterbach · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a wild collection (pun intended).

It is another collection of a run of the initial Image founders, namely Jim Lee. So, first and foremost the artwork really shines in this collection. With the caveat that not all issues in here are drawn by Jim Lee and you can immediately tell when they aren't.

Onto the story:

WildC.A.T.s #0-4: The first story arc packs a lot of content and is incredibly dense. Each issue takes more than 30 minutes to read and introduce a plethora of characters, factions and teams. Then, characters have two callings, namely their codenames & their real names. But even so, the artwork is amazing and the story is intriguing and has a satisfying conclusion [5/5].

WildC.A.T.s Special #1: Kind of feels like a filler story, to bridge the gap to #5 and introduce Providence to the readers. Not very intriguing [2/5].

WildC.A.T.s Trilogy #1-3: Not penciled by Jim Lee and these three issues look very ugly. Even though the story is good, as the whole Coda Mythos is explained here, the artwork drags the whole story down [3/5].

Killer Instinct, spanning multiple Cyberforce & WildC.A.T.s issues #1: The famous foldout page is found here and it does look amazing. Rereading this crossover reminded me that I prefer Mark Sylvestri's artwork and writing just a little bit more. Not a lot happens here admittedly [4/5].

WildC.A.T.s #8-9: The past of Marlowe is explored here, while Grifter is off for another adventure, which is not collected here (why not DC!?). The story is ok, but the whole character of Marlowe feels a bit shaky at this point, especially with him seemingly being taken off the book here [3/5]

WildC.A.T.s #10-13: Chris Claremont writes this story, what's not to love? Apparatenly everything, since this was the low-point of this collection for me. New characters are introduced, but not properly woven into the story. Zealot has some kind of sickness, becomes a goddess and strips her powers. None of this made sense to me and I hated this story arc. At least the backup stories were intriguing, yet pointless [1/5].

#14 is not here, because of the Image Swap Month. Ok, fair enough. But there is a Savage Dragon #13a written and drawn by Jim Lee, which has a Grifter solo story. Why is this not here DC?

WildC.A.T.s #15-20: James, Starman, Robinson is writing this. I love his writing, however these issues interconnect with other titles, such as Stormwatch, not to be seen in this collection. It's infuriating and lessens the enjoyment of this story. There's a lot of new characters yet again and I can't focus on what is important and who are key players in other books not found here [1/5].

Team One: WildC.A.T.s & Stormwatch Still writen by James Robinson and collected in it's entirety, praise the lord. My favourite story in this book, yet completely unrelated to the main story, as it is all in the past. But the team assembled here is fun and I want to read more of this [5/5].

All in all this collection does not provide a smooth reading experience. Still the first story arc is amazing and the artwork is leaps and bounds beyond anything else published in the early 90s. So I can give a small recommendation for this volume.

[Jon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Like a missing Cannon films picture with an insane budget. Might not work for those who don't have nostalgia for this period, though the art and early digital color work is undeniable. Just wish the inkers could have kept up with Jim and Travis.

Could do without Team 1 and the Wildstorm Rising crossover issue.

[Billy H · Rating 4 out of 5]

Art great but story was lacking which is due to not sure what direction Lee and his writing team wanting to go.

[Markus Seaberry · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was a fun read, I didn’t know the early stories of the Wildcats.