Wildstorm Set 1... my first foray into Chrome
In 1994, I was in high school. My baseball card collecting days were behind me and all I was worried about was comic books and girls. Spider-man and the usual cast of Marvel characters were out of touch in those days as the comic world had been thrown into a manic state thanks to some of the greatest minds the comic world had ever seen; Jim Lee, Todd McFarlane, Marc Silvestri, Jim Valentino, Erik Larsen, Rob Liefield, Dale Keown, Sam Keith and Whilce Portacio.
Image Comics was a breath of fresh air for the stale world of comic books. Hell, DC had to kill Superman to try and regain some of their readers. Anyway, Jim Lee's branch of Image called Wildstorm put out this amazing set of Chrome cards in 1994. I bought every pack I could find back in the day trying to complete this set. 25 years later and I'm still 12 cards short.
Page 2 here features the cast of Wild C.A.T.s. Wild C.A.t.s was Jim Lee's new team of mutants that rivaled Marvel's X-Men. Insanely popular for a while, as with alot of Image's first books, Wild C.A.T.s even got its own short-lived Saturday morning cartoon. Grifter is still such a cool character.
Page 3 is made up mostly of Stormwatch characters. Stormwatch was Wildstorm's #2 book for a while, until J. Scott Campbell's Gen 13 hit the stands.
Page 4 is more Stormwatch but at the bottom row, we start seeing Gen 13 characters. Gen 13 took full advantage of nerdy high school guys. The debut issue of the ongoing series sported 13 variant covers.
Page 5 continues with more Gen 13 characters. Rainmaker was the first openly gay comic character I ever remember. Last 7 cards on this page are from Whilce Portacio's Wetworks. Wetworks was cool, but it didn't live up to the hype. The Wetworks cards were intriguing because they predated the comic. Wetworks was supposed to have launched in 1992 with all of Image's other core titles (Wild C.A.T.s, Youngblood, Cyberforce, Savage Dragon, Shadowhawk, Spawn and Pitt), but it was delayed until Jine of 1994.
Page 6 gets us into Team 7. This comic was set in the past and lays the groundwork for all the WildStorm books. Most every WildStorm character can be tied back to Team 7.
Page 7 leads off with the ominous duo of Deathblow and Sister Mary. Union, which was a very underrated book, is also featured on this page.
Page 8 plunges us into the villains of WildStorm. The Cabal and Coda populate this page.
Page 9 and even more baddies.
Page 10, bad dudes. I can't get over how good these cards still look after 25 years.
Page 11 and almost at the end.
Card 100 is followed up with an instruction card. These cards had stats on the bottom half of the back for some kind of game you could play with them. I never played, but each pack had one of those instruction cards and a checklist.
If any of you can help, here is what I still need;
1- Brass
6- Soldier
7- Timespan
20- Fuji
22- Winter
28- Sunburst
49- Michael Cray
59- Lynch
64- Hightower
72- Hestia
79- Nychus
99- Argos
Promo1a - Diamond
Promo1b - Direct Market
Promo1c - Wizard
C1 - Wild C.A.T.s
C2 - Stormwatch
C3 - Gen 13
C4 - Team 7
C5 - Wetworks
C6 - The Cabal
C7 - Troika
C8 - Warguard
C9 - Mercs
I also have about 50% of the 1995 WildStorm Chromium Covers set. Would like to complete it at some point too.
Gen13 came about 6 years too late. I would have loved that comic as a teenager.
ReplyDeleteIt was a good read. I remember selling my copies of the mini-series right after the ongoing series came out. Those things were bringing in some major cash back then.
DeleteI know that I bought a couple packs of these when they came out, as I was a fan of some of the Image books, but for whatever reason this set didn't make much of an impression on me at the time, I know this because I never did buy any more after those initial packs. Looking at some of the cards now though, I could totally see myself buying some were I to come across them. Putting Deathblow and Mary Pittarese back-to-back was a nice touch on their part, good looking cards too.
ReplyDeleteP.S. I'm somehow just finding out about your blog tonight, I like the looks of it so far and have added it to my blogroll, now if you'll excuse me, I've gotta go catch up on some more of your posts :)