Stormwatch #16 Review

You can't really blame Harry Tanner for trying to eliminate Midnighter in the current arc of Stormwatch. If I were trying to disguise myself and secretly assume control of a team full of sci-fi heroes, I wouldn't want a guy with the combined skills of Batman and Taskmaster mucking things up either. The premise of Betrayal is solid enough in that sense, if a little cliched. The execution is where the arc is more uneven. Peter Milligan is doing a fine job juggling his various characters, but the writing veers towards melodrama far too often.

Issue #16 sees Midnighter suffer the wrath of a spurned Apollo and an entire team that has been mislead to think he betrayed them. Honestly, I found myself caring less about the rest of the team's reactions and more about the dynamic between the two lovers. They've tended to hold my interest consistently amid all the internal and external changes this series has gone through. Them and Jenny Quantum, who is never not fun to read.

However cliched the idea of a team turning against one of its own may be, Milligan cuts through the problem by delivering a new twist late into this issue. Readers have known about Tanner's betrayal for some time, but this new twist throws a wrench into the works while still feeling like a natural extension of previous storylines. It should lend the book a welcome air of unpredictability as Betrayal continues to unfold.

Unfortunately, this issue once again sees regular artist Will Conrad joined by fill-in artists (in this case Eduardo Pansica and Julio Ferreira). It's frustrating that this has apparently become the norm. The guest artists fit in with Conrad's style well enough. The problem is more than Conrad's art often looks rushed, with too much reliance on stiff, unnatural CG models and not enough of the more organic style he relies on in other books. Must Stormwatch always suffer these sorts of visual woes?

Jesse is a writer for various IGN channels. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following @jschedeen on Twitter, or Kicksplode on MyIGN.

Source : ign[dot]com