DC Entertainment Brings in Warren Ellis to Revive WildStorm Imprint

Following the launch of Gerard Way’s “pop-up imprint” Young Animal, DC Entertainment has announced a second creator-curated line to launch in 2017, as Warren Ellis returns to the publisher — and the characters he made famous in series such as Stormwatch and The Authority — to revive the WildStorm imprint.

WildStorm originated at Image Comics in 1992, the creation of Image founder (and current DC Entertainment co-publisher) Jim Lee, named for two of his creations for Image, WildC.A.T.s and Stormwatch. The line was purchased by DC in 1999, and ran through 2010 before the characters and concepts were folded into the wider DC superhero universe as part of the company’s 2011 New 52 reboot.

During WildStorm’s DC tenure, the line was home to Ellis’ Stormwatch and The Authority, as well as Ed Brubaker’s Sleeper and a number of other critically acclaimed series offering a skewed take on the superhero concept. (Midnighter, a fan-favorite series from 2015, originated as Ellis’ WildStorm take on the Batman character.)

The new WildStorm will debut in early 2017, with a series by Ellis and artist Jon Davis-Hunt called The Wild Storm, before being joined at a later date by three additional series: WildC.A.T.s, Zealot and Michael Cray. No launch dates or creator details have been released for those three titles.

The news comes ahead of next month’s release of Normal, the third full-length novel by Ellis. 

Talking to ComicBook.com about the imprint, Ellis said, “After long reflection, I couldn’t turn down the invitation to renovate the house that Jim Lee built, and refit its unique combination of cosmic paranoia and paramilitary conspiracy for the post-political space madness of the twenty-teens.” He described the project as “looking back to look forward.”

The Wild Storm will debut in Feb. 2017.

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