| "Wildstorm Rising" | |||
|---|---|---|---|
 Cover ofWildstorm Rising (1996),trade paperback collected edition, art byBarry Windsor-Smith | |||
| Publisher | WildStorm | ||
| Publication date | May – Jun1995 | ||
| Genre | |||
| |||
| Main character(s) | WildC.A.T.s,Stormwatch | ||
| Wildstorm Rising | ISBN 1-56389-588-9 | ||
"Wildstorm Rising" was acrossover event published byImage Comics andWildStorm that involved the entire line of titles published by WildStorm in 1995.
The 10-part crossover was published as a two-issuecomic booklimited seriesWildstorm Rising that served as bookends of the story arc (cover dated May1995-June 1995) while also running through these specific WildStorm titles. The chapters are as following:
Various comic book writers and artists who worked on this crossover event included:Jim Lee,Travis Charest,Ron Marz,Kevin Maguire andBarry Windsor-Smith (who co-wrote & illustratedWildstorm Rising # 1, and illustrated all of the covers to tie-in issues).
Windsor-Smith later said that he was talked into illustratingWildstorm Rising, and regretted participating it. He related that in reading the story and illustrating it, he could not understand the motivations of any of the characters, even when he read earlier Wildstorm books featuring the characters. He says he "mucked with the plot awfully" in order to improve it and his enthusiasm for it, saying, "After intense thinking, I realized what I was doing wrong: I was looking for characters! I know this sounds really glib as if I'm trying to build up to a funny line. But I’m really not. That was my problem: I was looking for characterization, and there was none. 'There is no characterization! That's what you’re doing wrong here, Barry!' They’re all ciphers!" Windsor-Smith later learned that writerJames Robinson was not pleased with Windsor-Smith's alterations to the plot.[1]
Stormwatch andWildC.A.T.S teams end up at odds but have to stop fighting long enough to stopHelspont andDefile from collecting all the keys to unlock the Daemonite ship which could destroy Earth, ship buried on Earth since centuries.
This crossover was later collected as thetrade paperbackWildstorm Rising (272 pages,Image Comics, June 1996,ISBN 1-887279-23-7, WildStorm, December 1998,ISBN 1-56389-588-9)