Summary:-Stormwatch is a fictional United Nations-sponsored superhero team in the Wildstorm Universe (originally the Image Universe). Stormwatch first appeared in Stormwatch #1, created by Jim Lee.
Stormwatch began in the comic book Stormwatch, published by Image Comics but owned by Jim Lee. Among the main early writers of Stormwatch vol. 1 were Jim Lee, Brandon Choi, H. K. Proger and Ron Marz; among the main early artists were Scott Clark, Brett Booth, Matt Broome and Renato Arlem. The Stormwatch team was run by the United Nations, and overseen from a satellite by their director, "the Weatherman". The Weatherman was one Henry Bendix, who had cybernetic implants connected to his brain to better monitor various world situations and his Stormwatch teams in action. His field commander was Jackson King, aka Battalion. Other members included Fahrenheit (a young American woman, a pyrokinetic), Hellstrike (an Irish police officer, an energy being), Winter (an ex-Russian Spetznaz officer, an energy absorber), Fuji (a young Japanese man, another energy being trapped in a large, super-strong containment suit), and Diva (a young Italian woman with sonic powers).
Later, Ron Marz, who had worked previously on Marvel Comics' Silver Surfer title and had developed Hal Jordan's Green Lantern replacement Kyle Rayner at DC Comics, took on the writing chores. Concurrently, James Robinson of DC's Starman fame was writing WildC.A.T.s. Robinson and Marz, under the editorial direction of Jim Lee, intertwined the storylines of the two books over the course of several months.
Also around this time, two two-issue miniseries were released, Stormwatch Team One (written by James Robinson) and WildC.A.T.s Team One (written by Steven Seagle). These two miniseries were also intertwined, and revealed that the groundwork for both teams had been laid by a core group in the mid 1960s, consisting of Saul Baxter (Lord Emp), Zealot, Majestic, John Colt (the template for Spartan), Backlash, a young Henry Bendix and Jackson King's father Isaiah, all of whom would be members of, or would figure prominently in the later Stormwatch and WildC.A.T.s teams. In this series, the term WildStorm, the publishing imprint's codename, was defined as a code term used by the United States Government, "Wild" referring to extraterrestrial life forms and "Storm" referring to invading forces.
Robinson's WildC.A.T.s run and Marz's Stormwatch run culminated in the WildStorm Rising crossover event, during which, the memberships of both teams were disrupted, with Stormwatch having sustained casualties and the WildC.A.T.s mistakenly believed dead. After WildStorm Rising, Alan Moore took over writing on WildC.A.T.s. Later, after a second imprint-wide crossover, Warren Ellis took over writing Stormwatch with #37 (July 1996).
Warren Ellis' version of Stormwatch was heavily influenced by DC's Vertigo line and its notable authors, such as Alan Moore, Grant Morrison and Garth Ennis.[citation needed] Ellis injected more sexual and horror elements, thinly disguised political commentary, and criticisms of the United States government into the stories. The art was toned down from the more exaggerated '90's style which had dominated all of the early Image Comics, allowing readers to take the book more seriously. It was during this period that Ellis used Stormwatch to introduce the concept of the Bleed, a space between parallel universes which features heavily in Planetary and other comics set in the Wildstorm Universe.
By the end of volume one, Ellis had revised Henry Bendix as a manipulative villain, much as Grant Morrison did with the character of "The Chief" in his run on DC's Doom Patrol.
Ellis continued to write the book as it transitioned into Stormwatch volume 2, until the WildC.A.T.s/Aliens crossover of August 1998 — also written by Ellis — saw the Stormwatch team all but massacred by xenomorphs, the creatures from the Alien series of films. Conveniently, most of the Stormwatch characters Ellis had not created were killed off in this story. A group of the survivors became the main cast of Ellis' new series The Authority, including Ellis-created characters Jenny Sparks, Jack Hawksmoor, Apollo, and the Midnighter, as well as Swift (who debuted in Stormwatch v1 #28, written by Jeff Mariotte), and two new characters who were the successors of the Engineer and the Doctor from Ellis' Change or Die storyline. Stormwatch volume 2 ended with one final story taking place after WildC.A.T.s/Aliens, in which the United Nations laid to rest the institution of Stormwatch alongside its fallen members. The very last scene, a conversation between the former members of Stormwatch Black, served to introduce the concept of the Authority and promote its upcoming first issue. Other survivors from the original team (including Battalion, Christine Trelane, and Flint) appeared in The Authority, and King and Trelane later became central characters in The Monarchy.
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