Posted in: Comics, Comics Publishers, Current News, DC Comics, Superman | Tagged: bryan hitch, stormwatch, Tom Raney, warren ellis, wildstorm

DC to Publish Stormwatch Compendium as The Road To The Authority

Warren Ellis on DC Comics Publishing a massive Stormwatch Compendium as The Road To The Authority ahead of the Superman film.

I was writing up a piece about DC Comics's decision to publish the Stormwatch Compendium by Warren Ellis, Tom Raney and Bryan Hitch, as The Road To The Authority. All ahead of a planned Authority movie sometime in the next decade. With The Engineer appearing as a lackey to Lex Luthor in the upcoming Superman movie… When Ellis just mentioned it in his newsletter. This means I can just cut and paste a bunch of what he said, as well as the Amazon listing, saving me the time and the typos.

Stormwatch Compendium Paperback – January 7, 2025
Before the Authority make their big-screen debut, read the pivotal stories that paved the way to the ground-breaking team's comic book debut! The Authority is slated as a highly anticipated upcoming feature film from DC Studios, adapting the brutal super-team introduced by writer Warren Ellis and artist Bryan Hitch to live-action for the first time. Readers curious about the formation of the Authority can trace their origin in Stormwatch: The Road to Authority Compendium, a comprehensive collection of the influential stories that set the stage!   In 1996, Warren Ellis took over as writer of Stormwatch, a major part of Jim Lee's WildStorm Productions, alongside artist Tom Raney. Ellis reinvented the concept from more conventional superheroics to a take-no-prisoners strike team that quickly attracted attention throughout the industry, as readers questioned the way that superheroes are perceived. Ellis redefined the team and introduced new members, including the electric Jenny Sparks, the city-symbiote Jack Hawksmoor, powerhouse Apollo, and brutal Midnighter—leading directly to the game-changing debut of The Authority! This volume collects Stormwatch (Vol. 1) #37-50, Stormwatch Preview #1, and Stormwatch (Vol. 2) #1-11.

Warren Ellis writes;

" This collects all the work I wrote for STORMWATCH across two volumes. Which apparently totals six hundred and fifty six pages. A number that I find kind of scary. It will cost sixty US dollar, which is also kind of scary, but at 656 pages you can also use it as a weapon, a small performance stage or the foundation for a large outbuilding. This is all work done in the 1990s. Mike Heisler brought me into Wildstorm, and later on Scott Dunbier took over wrangling me. Scott and I have had our share of arguments over the years, but I'm glad to say we remain friends – Scott just left IDW, where he's been for many years, to start his own venture, and I am very much looking forward to seeing what he does next. The main artist on STORMWATCH was Tom Raney, and I have incredible respect both for his work and his stoic endurance of every stupid idea I stuffed into those scripts. God, I once made him do Joe Shuster, Will Eisner and Jack Kirby in a single episode. (Now that I check, I did that more than once! And had Gina Going approximate a Frank Hampson colouring effect one time! God, I'm sorry, everybody.) He's one of those artists I wish I were still working with today."

"Even when you're not talking directly with the artist – and this was the Nineties, remember, so it wasn't easy when your collaborators were on the other side of the world – the act of the work itself becomes a conversation. Tom's Henry Bendix was so f-cking creepy that I had to lean into what Tom was giving me there. This is just one reason why comics writers get so pissed off – but not as pissed off as the artists! – when they're named as sole author of a work of comics. Every comic is the representation of the point where writer and artists meet and fuse. A fusion does not have a single author.

"I wrote a little bit about one of the experiments I pulled in the writing of STORMWATCH at this link here. I used that little stage for all kinds of stunts. One time I used the cover and inside front cover as story pages, so the whole book ran together from cover to end. I was allowed to get away with a lot, and Tom Raney made it all work. Towards the back of the book, you'll find my first collaboration with Bryan Hitch, also still a friend today, and I believe it was Scott who convinced him to come on board. And those pages were the seed of THE AUTHORITY. I wrote a bit about that at this link here:"

"A big part of doing THE AUTHORITY was trying to pay back my friends. And this STORMWATCH book is coming out because there's apparently going to be a THE AUTHORITY film sometimes in the next few years, and I've read that The Engineer character is going to be in James Gunn's SUPERMAN. Chances are, that film may be more Mark Millar and Frank Quitely's AUTHORITY than ours. But that's okay. I chose Mark Millar to replace me on THE AUTHORITY, and I told the office to hire Frank Quitely to draw it without putting him through any kind of audition, and I was proven right. So I will be able to take some pride and pleasure in whichever version is presented onscreen."

You can read more from Warren Ellis right here.

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