The announcements re: DC and Warners is not encouraging, with all but DC Comics moving to California and jobs being cut at DC, and now the news that Wildstorm will end in December. I shouldn't be surprised. Sooner or later, it seems that companies bought by other companies get phased out. Or they split. AOL Time Warner didn't work out, and then there's FedEx Kinko's which recently eradicated the Kinko's name to become FedEx Office. So even if DC uses many of the Wildstorm characters, presumably on their own Earth in the Multiverse, it's still the end of an imprint that was once a company that's now a casualty of a declining market for print comics.
I never read a lot of Wildstorm books. I'm mostly a Wildcats reader, having started with Wildcats 2.0, but I went and got the trades available for the earlier version and I love those characters. I'd like to think this will work out for the best, but I'm not hopeful. I fear all the changes at DC will benefit only my wallet as I end up with fewer comics I want to read. Unless I start looking at the smaller companies and non-mainstream titles. I'm not sure about that as my love for comics has been firmly grounded in the superhero variety, especially of the DCU, and I can't imagine getting into Marvel, though in the '70s, I did read a few Marvel titles.
Ah well, I guess nothing lasts forever. Hopefully, we'll know soon where things stand with DC.
I enjoyed a handful of Wildstorm titles over the past few years (Authority, Stormwatch PHD, Wildcats, Gen13), but gave 'em up several months ago when I could see the handwriting on the wall. It was always a sobering detail to glance at sales figures and see headlining books selling such a ridiculously low run. Of all those WS titles, the one I'd recommend most would be Stormwatch PHD, which was a pretty good story that only suffered minimally under the armageddon storyline. Also, Abnett & Lanning's Authority was interesting and certainly worth a read. I've no idea if they've been collected yet; if they have, snap them up before they're out of print.
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