Holy damn. Welcome to the WildStorm Universe, Mr. Mark Bagley! This widescreen shot of WSU kickassery will be spread across the covers of The Authority #19 and WildCats #20. Bagley lends his talents to more than 20 heroes - and special props to Trevor Scott, who hit it out of the park inking this one.

Pretty sweet, right?

We’ve speculated quite a bit here recently, wondering how artists like Al Barrionuevo and Tim Seeley are able to draw so many heroes and villains in a single comic (and often, a single page.)

Another question, however - how does one prepare themselves to WRITE that many characters into a story? There are several fans out there with an encyclopedic knowledge of the WSU (at least a few of you are regulars in our comments section) - but I know at least I’d need to go back and do a LOT of reading just to make sure I’m able to keep everyone straight.

Over at Broken Frontier, upcoming WildCats writer Adam Beechen explains how he was able to prep himself to write a comic story that includes hundreds of the WSU’s characters. Check out his column here.

Earlier this year, Adam Beechen and Tim Seeley promised their epic run on WildCats will includes hundreds of characters from the WildStorm universe. You guys chimed in with your guesses at who might show up in an earlier open thread, and George Perez’s amazing split cover gave you a hint at a few of the people who you’ll be seeing. Want another peek?

Here’s a shot from the upcoming WildCats #19. I’m really not sure how Tim’s able to draw that many characters in one splash - does he take time to eat? Sleep? But, wow. His pain is our gain, I guess.

You guys may have already seen this floating around that wide, scary place you call the Internet - if you have, well, lucky you! The one-and-only George Perez gives us his take on many (and I mean MANY - these covers are crammed) of the powerplayers of the WildStorm universe as connecting covers for WildCats #19 and The Authority #18.

Ok - less talk, more art, right? Have at it.

The extremely talented Ryan Sook was kind enough to supply commentaries for his amazing WildCats covers. Here’s his commentary for issues #17 and #18.

From Ryan:

WILDCATS#17 - DANG! trying to keep my motif running became
impossible here! the figures should have been far more orange and warm
against the blue background to fit my original concept, but lighting
them that way made voodoo’s tank top and head wrap go brown and
spartan’s SILVER suit look GOLD! so rather than allow the characters
to become unrecognizable i decided to simply make the figures as warm
as possible and keep the blue background as cool as possible. the best
laid plans…

WILDCATS#18 - last one! at least for now…. here again i
had to sort of break with the “complimentary” foreground/background
color scheme in order to keep the characters ultra recognizable. far
more important than an artistic concept when trying to do “iconic”
images of these characters. had a great time drawing these guys. my
first shot at drawing a couple of characters that i’ve always thought
are some of the best to emerge from the original wildstorm universe. i
really liked giving a graceful pose to warblade. like a visual oxymoron.

The extremely talented Ryan Sook was kind enough to supply commentaries for his amazing WildCats covers. Here’s his commentary for issues #15 and #16.

From Ryan:

WILDCATS#15 - this cover was just a bunch of fun to draw!
the background of blades and such really ties zealot and backlash
together. i also discovered on this cover that the highlights on the
figures (which is done on all these covers) causes the figures to
almost merge into one shape. which i thought was an interesting
element. showing that these teammates really move and fight as one
force.

WILDCATS#16 - at editor ben abernathy’s suggestion i used a
background collage made up of ancient architecture and relics of
royalty to unite the identities of father and daughter. i think it
ended up being a great motif for these characters. thanks ben! my
favorite part of this one is having Savant fading to transparent as
she begins teleporting allowing just a little of majestic’s armor to
come through at the bottom of the image.

The extremely talented Ryan Sook was kind enough to supply commentaries for his amazing WildCats covers. Over the next couple weeks we’ll share these here one the blog.

From Ryan:

WILDCATS #13 - this cover was the beginning of a motif for
wildcats that i thought would be interesting. having a character or
two in front of a design element linked to the character (s) and do it
with the characters in a complimentary color to the background to
really make them pop. i.e. the green foreground figures against the
red background. then further, the idea was to run this series of
covers in a rainbow spectrum to link them all the way through. so 13
is a red background, 14 is orange, 15 is yellow etc. at first i
thought this would just look good, then it also seemed to become a
secondary element to the design in that we see the whole “spectrum” of
characters separated from cover to cover but linked by the color scheme!
this was the first in the series and one of my
favorites because the boys just look ready to let all those bullets fly!

WILDCATS#14 - this second cover of the six i did follows
in the color scheme and design motif. it is however the only one that
breaks form having only one character. Tao’s “all hell’s gonna break
loose any minute now” kind of attitude manages to come across fairly
well in an other wise quiet cover. also, definitely my favorite
collage to compose of all the backgrounds done in the series.

You get all of James Robinson’s classic WildCats run in one fat volume. Need another reason why this is worth picking up? Really?

How about a cover and pin-up gallery in the back pages, including art by Travis Charest, Jim Lee, Barry Windsor-Smith, Mat Broome, Tom Raney, Larry Stroman, Salvador Larocca, Jason Johnson and Scott Williams?

At Comic Con this year, Adam Beechen said he and Tim Seeley will be making their upcoming run on WildCats one of the biggest team-up books we’ve ever seen, and it sounds like they’re holding to that promise. If you read Shannon Eric Denton’s editorial post last week, he mentions that “[he has] asked Tim to draw at least 70 characters on each page and so far he’s doubled that every time.”

Wow.

Please, Shannon - please, please send me those pages when they’re ready.

I can only guess who’ll be popping up - including a few characters that have been MIA for a little while.

Which WildStorm Universe characters are you most hoping to see?

I originally broke into this business as a penciler. There were a few artists who were breaking big at the time and I so wanted to do what they were doing. One of those artists was Jim Lee. So after a slight (14 years in Hollywood!) detour, here I am. Getting to work with the characters I originally fell in love with some 15 years ago.

In my mind, WildStorm is home to all of Jim’s creations. I’m hoping, now that I’m in the sandbox, we can further establish why these creations are not only incredibly relevant but…fun. I’m having fun. The teams I’m assembling for this are having fun. We’re all answering the battle call to create something fun. Something we’d want to read. Hopefully something you’ll want to read. Blasting from the uber-awesome events of World’s End, we’ll be continuing the charge!

We’ll take a new look at some familiar characters—but also reveal where EVERYONE who was ever in a WildStorm book is currently. Hey, I bought everything WildStorm before starting here…I had questions. Fun thing is now I’m the guy who gets to answer them.

Starting with an epilogue in issue 17 of THE AUTHORITY, Marc Bernardin & Adam Freeman are bringing the interstellar widescreen drama along with superstar artist Al Barrionuevo. This book is going to continue to address the big questions—and, more importantly, provide the big answers in ways you never expected.

On the stellar front, with issue 19 of WILDCATS, Adam Beechen is prepared to give ’Cats fans more action and more characters than they could ever have possibly imagined. Joining him is New York Times bestseller (for Hack/Slash) and powerhouse artist Tim Seeley. I have asked Tim to draw at least 70 characters on each page and so far he’s doubled that every time. This is widescreen action at its very best. It’s everything John Woo dreams about and then some!

So there ya go. As a fan, I’m happy. As a comic book professional, I’m happy. And we’re all hoping you join us for what’s about to be WildStorm’s best year ever!

Storm out!

-Shannon Eric Denton