Every Wednesday we take turns to delve into our trusty longboxes, pluck out a dusty back issue, and give you our thoughts. We’ll also try and place it in the context of the time it was originally published.

From the title here, a casual reader might think they know what to expect. With Batman’s tangles with Predators having become a regular fixture of the franchise and many publishing companies searching for similar revenue streams, the stage seems set for a knockabout one-off crossover, pitting the then-fading Wildcats team up against Ridley Scott’s finest. Obviously, such a cash cow would be kept at arm’s distance from the core Wildstorm books…

What you don’t expect, however, is for most of the cast of one of Wildstorm’s core books to die off-panel. In structure, the story is a textbook disaster/horror movie, with the Wildcats team reforming to answer a distress call from the Skywatch Satellite, only to discover that the situation is far worse than they feared, and they’ll need to band together with the survivors to escape the nightmare. Writer Warren Ellis obviously had very different ideas to most of his contemporaries as to the point of such a crossover, seeing his guest stars as being a sufficiently big gun for him to blow away much of the baggage which was still cluttering his work on the ongoing Stormwatch series. Although by this point he had been writing Stormwatch for a considerable period of time, Ellis’s dissatisfaction with the book as he inherited it still shines through, and he takes considerable pleasure in bumping off many of the weaker characters he had previously been forced to play with. Staying true to his licence, there’s distinct horror tone to much of the story, with the Wildcats having to flight against Aliens spawned inside members of the Stormwatch team.

Only one member of the team is allowed to retain his dignity, with Winter sacrificing himself at the conclusion of the story to save the Earth from infestation. To add insult to injury, the story concluded in the next issue of Stormwatch with the (Ellis-created) survivors of the team going off to form The Authority, a group with very similar aims to an outfit that was ranged against Stormwatch only a few issues earlier. There isn’t a great deal of plot here, but the writer’s knowledge of the Skywatch setup is put to good use as the Wildcats conduct a surprisingly logical analysis of their situation. Chris Sprouse makes a reasonable fist of the art duties, although his style lacks the detail need to convey the book’s sometimes gruesome content.

It’s not high art, but there’s a certain satisfaction in watching such a comprehensive assassination.

The Wildcats franchise embodies any writer’s nightmare: trying to follow genius. Joe Casey turned a standard superhero team book into a brilliant corporate espionage tale, as the Halo Corporation gave the fruits of its alien technology to the world, in the face of opposition from every source of political or financial authority. Low sales forced the conclusion of Wildcats Ver 3.0 after its second year, but it was obvious that there could be no mere regression to what had gone before. This need for outstanding creative direction was resolved in the most obvious fashion, by getting Grant Morrison to write the book. Morrison’s run proved both visionary and entertaining- for the single issue it consisted of. Although there’s recently been talk of remounting the writer’s take as a limited series, the book has now clocked up its fifth incarnation, following on from Wildstorm’s “World’s End” event.

With the world almost destroyed by one of the weaponised post-human armies that appear to be available to every borough council in the Wildstorm universe, humanity is scrabbling for survival in the remains of civilisation. Halo was better placed than most organisations to weather the apocalypse, but doing so cost omnipotent CEO Jack Marlowe his powers, leaving him a shadow of his former self. The Wildcats team is now holed up in the company’s LA headquarters, trying to come to terms with the end of everything. With his page count reduced by a back-up story, Christos Gage works with economy, using the rescue of a group of civilians to introduce us to the team, before focussing on their internal conflict. It’s just as well that the setting is such a gripping one, as this incarnation of Wildcats would struggle to succeed on the strength of its characters. Only Grifter and Hadrian are of any interest in themselves, with remainder of the cast either too absurd to take seriously, or part of the army of near-identical generic alien warrior-women which Casey quickly jettisoned during his run.

The book’s appeal is immensely increased by some spectacular art from Trevor Hairsine. His mange-influenced style may be an unconventional choice for a book with such a bleak concept, but his hiring may well be intended to prevent the book becoming too dark. If so, it succeeds admirably, preventing the standard superhero clash that closes the issue looking remotely incongruous. Gage works well given the material he has to play with, using the strong pull of the post-apocalyptic setting to draw the reader through a considerable amount of exposition on both the World’s End concept and recent Wildcats miniseries. The characters’ skirting round some aspects of their predicament means that their nemesis’ attack at the end of the issue comes as a relief rather than feeling contrived, as the pieces of the puzzle slide into place. Despite their bunker existence, the Wildcats look in reasonable health. The biggest test for the World’s End direction comes later this week, when The Authority joins the party.