|
| - "color: darkorange">Captain Atom]]. Majestic currently stars in his second ongoing solo-series, though its cancellation has recently been announced.
* Savant: The daughter of Lord Majestros and Zealot , Savant thinks she's Zealot's sister. An adventurer possessing many artifacts of mystic power and advanced technologies, including boots that can teleport the person who wears it and a piece of the Orb. Savant has shown superhuman strength and has a genius-level intellect, but can also be irresponsible and brash. She was the leading character of the short-lived Savant Garde-series.
* Condition Red: Max Cash is the younger brother of Grifter with excellent, if limited, fighting and marksmanship abilities. Max was gunned down by a Coda Assassin in issue #49 of the first series . He was resurrected as a zombie for one annual in the second series.
* T.A.O.: The T.A.O. is an artificially produced human being with peculiar thinking abilities that enables him to be inhumanly persuasive and incredibly intuitive. He was eventually revealed to have been manipulating the team to self-destruction, the revelation of which caused him to seemingly be killed by Majestic. Later he re-appeared, having founded a world-wide criminal organization that aimed to destabilize human global governments, public institutions and age-old secret societies that controlled many aspects of the Wildstorm Universe. T.A.O.'s story after he left the WildC.A.T.S. were told in the series Point Blank and Sleeper
* Ladytron: Maxine Manchester, a cyborg punk with homicidal tendencies. She was captured by the Wildcats and through T.A.O.'s reprogramming convinced to join the team. She admired the cybernetic mercenary OvertKill and was romantically interested in Max Cash, though her interest was not returned. When T.A.O. was revealed as a traitor, he disabled her robotic body and Ladytron was taken to the Church of Gort. She became a nun for this new age cult devoted to robotics, but had a falling out with its members because she still contained organic bodyparts. She ended up with the Wildcats again, but was wounded again, this time by the serial killer Samuel Smith. The damage was so extensive that Ladytron was shut down. A short stint as Noir's reprogrammed pawn later, Ladytron's mind was downloaded into the Halo mainframe and her body was used by the wheelchair-bound Grifter as a remote-controlled stand-in.
Time travel team
The team consisted of Grifter, Max Profitt , Void and Spartan , as well as these new members:
*Mythos: A powerful mystic and Kherubim lord. He has superhuman physical attributes, such as an incredible speed.
*Olimpya: A Daemonite mercenary who has Coda training. Unlike many of her race, she was peaceful and even adopted a teenager named Kai, who apparently has Coda training as well. When Max Cash was killed, she killed his assassin in revenge. She was killed by zombie Max Cash during the Devil's Night crossover
*Sister Eve: Lord Entropy's daughter, who was a nun before joining the WildC.A.T.s. She has inherited her father's "chaos power".
3.0 Cast of Characters
Besides Grifter and Jack Marlowe, the main characters were:
*Edwin Dolby : Jack Marlowe's main accountant and right-hand man in the Halo Corporation. When Grifter's legs were seriously injured in a mission, he started training Dolby to be the second Grifter after learning of Dolby's natural aptitude for markmanship. Dolby, however, refused to kill. Despite this, Dolby was sent on a mission and during this mission he panicked and accidentally killed a man. He suffered a mental breakdown and quit Halo, but Marlowe was able to convince him to return by reinforcing his belief in the success of Halo's mission.
*Agent Wax: Jack Marlowe's mole at the National Park Service, a government agency tasked with monitoring superhuman activity. Wax is gifted with strong hypnotic powers, but his superiors never knew this. He quit the Service after the death of his partner, but he returned later. Because he had left, he was forced to take a desk job and was bullied by his boss, Agent Downs. He enacted revenge by having an affair with Downs' wife. Downs learned of Wax's manipulations and forced Wax to a confrontation. Wax made Downs kill himself with his hypnotic powers. He then used his powers to impersonate Downs. Marlowe found out about Downs' death, but decided to give Wax a second chance.
*C. C. Rendozzo: An information broker, who knows about Jack Marlowe's alien origin. In return for her silence on his alien heritage, Jack Marlowe agreed to rescue her son back, who had been kidnapped by his government agent father. Despite spending most of her time behind a desk, Rendozzo is quite skilled with firearms and joined Grifter in an attempt to rescue Zealot, even taking a number of her henchmen along with her.
*Agent Orange: Another mole of Jack Marlowe, this time at the FBI. Agent Orange is an enhanced human, who can be mentally programmed for certain tasks. Agent Orange's blood is composed of dioxin and he has shown superhuman strength, durability and endurance. Never speaking or showing any emotion, Agent Orange is quite similar in appearance and behaviour to The Terminator.
*The Beef Boys: Two remarkably, possibly superhumanly, strong men dressed in S&M fetish gear. Apart from running a BDSM club, they are also mercenaries who work for Grifter from time to time. The taller of the two, Glenn, never speaks, while the other, Cedric, is quite eloquent. Glenn was killed by the Coda.
- "color: ForestGreen">Elektra]]. In recent years Zealot has turned upon her former allies in the Coda, claiming that by becoming mere assassins they have betrayed their purpose. Since then she has almost wiped out the Coda single-handed.
* Voodoo: Priscilla Kitaen, a telepathic human-Kherubim hybrid with Daemonite ancestry, Voodoo has the ability to see Daemonites who have possessed humans. Voodoo was an exotic dancer before being rescued by the WildC.A.Ts from the Daemonites. She was later on trained by Zealot in combat and developed an attraction towards Spartan. Her Daemonite ancestry was not revealed until when she entered into a coma after being shot. Void entered in her mind through a computer, and it was revealed that one of her ancestors, a Kherubin, was possessed by a Damonite. Disappointed by her life as a superhero, she left the Wildcats and studied Voodoo magic. After she left the Wildcats, Voodoo was attacked by a serial killer called Samuel Smith, a fight which lost her both her legs. An elderly Daemonite appeared to her and taught her the use of her hidden powers of regeneration and time-manipulation. She managed to regrow her legs and started a relationship with her former teammate Maul.
* Grifter: Former government operative and member of Team 7, Cole Cash is the only male ever trained by the Coda. Grifter represented the loner of the group though he seemed devoted to his partner Zealot. He was the only member of the original team not to have any active post-human powers. His disagreements with Jacob Marlowe and the arrival of a second group of WildC.A.T.s led to his resignation and ill-fated solo comic book series. He returned to the Wildcats after the death of his brother, Max, only to leave the team again after Zealot's apparent death. Emp managed to convince him to rejoin their team to battle the threat of Kenyan. After Kenyan's death, Cole started working for Jack Marlowe. This job cost him the use of his legs, landing him in a wheelchair for a long time, even forcing him to use Ladytron's robotic body as a remote-controlled stand-in. Recently Grifter's latent powers healed his broken legs.
* Maul: Human-Kherubim hybrid capable of increasing his mass at the cost of his reasoning capability. Some have argued that the Maul character is an imitation of the [[marveldatabase:Hulk
- "color: darkorange">Superman]] knockoff, with similar powers and physical characteristics , though he also is a genius inventor and a highly skilled martial artist . He recently crossed over into the Superman comics, replacing the Man of Steel for a brief time, though he later returned and recently met [[dcdatabase:Captain Atom
- "color: ForestGreen">Hulk]]. Maul experiences powerful rage and is actually a Nobel-prized scientist named Dr. Jeremy Stone. In the second series, it was revealed he could increase his intelligence by decreasing his body mass, but this proved to be physically depleting. Jeremy has devoted himself to science and has shown some reluctance to use his superhuman powers these days. He started a relationship with Voodoo.
* Warblade: Human-Kherubim hybrid capable of transforming parts of his body into any solid weapon. Warblade is an accomplished martial artist. Although a virtual killing machine, Reno Bryce also has the soul of an artist, having his sculpted work displayed in major art galleries. During Moore's run, a Kheran lord trained him in the use of his powers. In the second series, he killed the mercenary Pike for killing his girlfriend and retired as a superhero. He still keeps in touch with Grifter.
* Void: A being capable of precognition, teleportation, and other cosmic stunts, Void has the ability to see various timelines due to her relationship with a cosmic Orb. Her persona was earlier revealed to be based on a Russian cosmonaut, Adrianna Tereshkova who died upon the arrival of the Orb from space. Over time Void grew more and more distant from humanity and the part of her spirit that was Adrianna moved on to the afterlife. The Void-entity existed without any host for a short time, before the actions of the traitor Noir endangered its existence and Spartan became its new host.
* Lord Emp: Jacob Marlowe is a multi-millionaire who owns the media/technology conglomerate HALO Corporation. Although he was once a Kherubim warlord, Emp does not remember his past and has no control over the powers he once wielded. It was the woman named Void who took him from his life as a homeless man and made him into the wealthy financer of the WildC.A.Ts. It was revealed he has assumed other rich personas in the past, including that of industrialist Saul Baxter, during most of the 20th century. In the second series, Emp had taken a more alien appearance in preparation for his 'Ascension', a process which ultimately cost him his physical body, but freed his spirit. Gone from the physical plane of existence, he left all his possessions to Spartan.
Savant's team
A second team was introduced later in the series. They were formed after the original team, rumored to be dead, had left for Khera, the Kherubim homeworld. This unlikely group broke from the WildC.A.T.s usual anti-Daemonite agenda and conducted a proactive war on criminals. This alienated them from many other characters in the Wildstorm universe.
* Mr. Majestic: He was another Kherubim warlord, Lord Majestros, one of four that had been stuck on Earth. Mr. Majestic is considered a [[dcdatabase:Superman
- "color: darkorange">DC Comics]], resurrected the Wildcats under a whole different premise - Wildcats dealt with the lives of the original members after the team's breakup following a botched mission during which team-member Zealot apparently died. Scott Lobdell provided the writing for the inital 7 issues as well as Mosaic oneshot detailing the change in lord Emp, with Travis Charest penciling most of them. New villains like Kenyan and CC Rendozo were featured as antagonists, but it was all dropped very quickly, with Travis leaving the monthly comic format for pitching in a French's still-to-be-released Metabarons graphic novel called Dreamshifters and Lobdell going away just a couple of issues later, after a very grim and bloody issue featuring Warblade's new status quo as he avenges the death of his girlfriend.
Wild Times: Wildcats and Wild Times: Grifter were published as oneshots, as a part of the strange crossover series Wild times that spotlighted the characters in Elseworlds-like alternate reality scenarios that bended genres.
Somewhere around this time, Wildcats' creator Jim Lee penciled the 12 issue maxi-series Divine Right, featuring a new character called Max Faraday with God complex issues, introducing even more new creations such as Fallen, who were seldom seen later, as well as the end of Internal Operations storyline. Strangely, Wildcats participated also in the Wildcats Aliens crossover written by Stormwatch's Warren Ellis that served as a coda to that series and a prequel to his Authority run, having very little to do with Wildcats themselves, but being beautifully penciled by Chris Sprouse.
As Joe Casey and Sean Phillips took over Wildcats, they quickly dealt away with Kenyan while Void and Emp ended up having Spartan absorb their assets and powers, thus the book began a long spell featuring him aided by Ladytron and Grifter with Maul and Voodoo guest-starring and as well as new characters Noir, Agents Wax and Mohr of the National Park Service. Warblade was featured very briefly, last time in the Wildcats 2000 annual that brought back the dead version Condition Red, killing Olympia. Casey and Phillips signaled the new Wildstorm - criticly acclaimed but low on readers' radar. The heroes fough Slaughterhouse Smith after which eventually Zealot showed returned. Casey also wrote the Ladytrone oneshot, a farsic rendition of her past, as well as a Mister Majestic ongoing series, cancelled at #9.
Wildcats Volume 2 Series Graphic Novels
*Street Smart - Collects # 1-6
*Vicious Circles - Collects # 8-13
*Serial Boxes - Collects # 14-19
*Battery Park - Collects # 20-28
Wildcats Version 3.0 - Corporate culture for a better world
The third series, Wildcats Version 3.0, was a part of the mature readers Eye of the Storm imprint, dealing with Spartan's agenda to better the world by proliferating advanced technology and power sources throughout the world via the HALO Corporation. Grifter was his troubleshooter and Agent Wax was one of his first associates. The stories added a motley group to this proactive organisation including the power broker C.C. Rendozzo and her organization, Agent Orange, and Grifter's unlikely pupil Edwin Dolby, one of HALO's accountants. The series ended with a thunderous finale where Zealot destroyed the Coda chapter she created on Earth. The whole series was written by Joe Casey and most of it was illustrated by Dustin Nguyen .
It is important to note that concurrent with Wildcats Version 3.0, Wildstorm also published very criticly acclaimed noir-superhero series Sleeper starring Alan Moore's Wildcats villain Tao and several of Wildcats and related characters. Spartan played a role in the Coup D'Etat crossover centering on The Authority taking over as presidents of Wildstorm Universe's America.
Wildcats Version 3.0 Graphic Novels
right|thumb|160px|WildC.A.T.s vol. 4 #01 cover by Jim Lee
*Brand Building - Collects # 1-6
*Full Disclosure - Collects # 7-12
In between the volumes
After guest-starring in Superman books, in 2004 DC published a Mr. Majestic mini-series to test waters for next year's eventual ongoing series that was cancelled at #17.
Wildcats starred in a limited series by Robbie Morrison and Talent Caldwell entitled Wildcats: Nemesis, focusing on Zealot, Majestic and the Coda continuity, while heavily spotlighting the new Wildstorm universe anti-hero character of Charis, Lady Nemesis.
At the same time, Wildstorm published Captain Atom: Armageddon maxi-series, heavily featuring Wildcats as they tried to help DC character Captain Atom to return to his universe and stop him from accidentally destroying their reality. Nikola, a female medic became the new Void with Captain Atom sharing a part of the power that eventually remade Wildstorm universe in it's current whole.
Volume 4
In 2006, as part of their new line-wide shake up called Worldstorm, WildStorm published a highly anticipated revamp, bimonthly Wildcats Volume 4 from fan favorites Grant Morrison and Jim Lee. The team consists of Spartan, Mr. Majestic, Zealot, Grifter, Voodoo, Savant, and Ladytron. Warblade is on a secret mission, and Maul has retired to his civilian identity. Kaizen Gamorra returned as villain, aided by the WildCats' first enemy, Helspont.
Creative Teams Volume 1
*0-9: Jim Lee , Brandon Choi
*10-13: Chris Claremont , Jim Lee
*14: Erik Larsen
*15-20: James Dale Robinson , Travis Charest, Jim Lee
*21-34: Alan Moore , and various artists
*35-36: Barbara Kesel , Pascual Ferry, Rich Johnson and Carlos D'Anda
*37-50: Brandon Choi, John Peterson and Mat Broome
Volume 2
*1-7: Scott Lobdell, Joe Casey , Travis Charest and others
*8-28: Joe Casey , Sean Phillips, Steve Dillon
Volume 3.0
*1-24: Joe Casey , Dustin Nguyen
Volume 4
*1-current: Grant Morrison , Jim Lee
TV series
A WildC.A.T.s TV series was created in 1994. It had only thirteen episodes and a "watered down", family-friendly storyline . The group was composed of all the original 'C.A.T.s. The major villain was Hellspont, but the Troika and the Coda were featured. A parody of the series, MadD.O.G.s, was seen during Alan Moore's run in the comics. The series was produced by Nelvana and WildStorm . The main differences between the series and the comic books were:
*Jacob Marlowe, the Kherubim Lord Emp, was an ordinary human here.
*Warblade just discovered his powers when he becomes part of the group, in the first episode. Because of this, he was the group's rookie, a position occupied by Voodoo in the original 'C.A.T.s.
*Maul appearently couldn't change back to his human form.
*Void was a Kherubim computer.
*Majestic was a villain, obsessed with finding the Orb and destroying the Daemonites.
*Max Cash was the leader of the Black Razors.
*Voodoo was still a minor and of course wasn't a stripper both because of her age and the fact that the cartoon was aimed for children.
WildC.A.T.s/Wildcats members Original team
The original WildC.A.T.s consisted of:
* Spartan: originally intended to be a highly sophisticated cyborg who could "die" and easily be downloaded to another body, Spartan's character has been revised several times. It was discovered he was designed after the Hadrian-series of cyborgs from the Kherubim's homeworld and there were plenty of similar androids like him. Spartan resembled the X-Men's stiff leader [[marveldatabase:Cyclops
- "color: ForestGreen">Cyclops]] in many ways but had an interesting angle by having "human emotions" towards Voodoo. Spartan's history grew even more complicated when Alan Moore explained he was an incarnation of a long-dead hero, John Colt, a.k.a. the Kherubim lord Yohn Kohl. Later still, he absorbed powers of Void, making him one of the most powerful beings in the Wildstorm Universe. He has turned away from the role of superhero, trying to improve the world as Jack Marlowe, CEO of the Halo Company by introducing highly advanced alien technology into human society.
* Zealot: Zannah, a Kherubim and a Coda warrior, Zealot is the former Majestrix of the Coda and helped develop their virtues and practices. She has lived for thousands of years and has had many relationships with both humans and aliens alike. After failing to follow her own rules under the Coda, she left their clan and they have hunted her since. She was part of Team One under the name of Lucy Blaze. Zealot has a close friendship with Grifter though she is equally devoted to her sister Savant, who is secretly her real daughter. Winter from Stormwatch is, possibly, Zealot's son. Zealot left the Wildcats and for a limited amount of time she joined Dept. PSI and co-led WildCORE with Backlash; a half Kherubim and former member Team 7. Zealot is seemingly based on the DC Comics character [[dcdatabase:Wonder Woman
- "color: ForestGreen">Marvel's]] [[marveldatabase:X-Men
- "color: darkorange">Wonder Woman]] and the Marvel Comics character [[marveldatabase:Elektra
- "color: ForestGreen">X-Men]] series, of which many people at first considered this new comic to be a copy. The Wildcats evolved and changed into a quite unique product and became one of the backbones of the Wildstorm Universe. This is mostly due to Alan Moore's involvement in the title, as well as other writers, including Chris Claremont, James Dale Robinson, who took over from Brandon Choi, and Jim Lee. The fine detailing and integration of titles and characters in the Wildstorm Universe also contributed to this.
The first series was named WildC.A.T.s, and was about the Covert Action Team created by a group of immortal aliens , stranded on Earth, to fight the evil Daemonites. It was originally printed under the banner of Image Comics in the mid 1990s. After the team disbanded a new series called Wildcats started, with a much grittier feature about the characters of the previous series. The third series - Wildcats Version 3.0 revolved around the HALO Corporation, its CEO Jack Marlowe , Grifter, and a gallery of new characters subverting corporation politics to their cause of creating a better world. This series culminated with the new team heading to Europe to fight the Coda and rescue Zealot in Coda War One.HistoryWildC.A.T.s - The Daemonite-Kherubim War
left|thumb|180px|WildC.A.T.s #32 cover by Jim Lee Launched as an original Image comic book title by hugely popular penciler X-Men penciler Jim Lee and his friend writer Brandon Choi, the comic book's premise revolved around the centuries long war between aliens called Kherubim and Daemonites. Kherubims, a nearly immortal, human-looking alien race with exceptional powers and skills, eventually travelled to Earth and by breeding with humans populated the planet with "Half-Breeds". Daemonites, on the other hand, were introduced as a more savage race with a less humanoid form. They resemble the creatures who fought with Ellen Ripley in the cult sci-fi hit movie, Aliens. Daemonites, besides having a fearsome appearance, also possessed various superhuman abilities including body possession and mental control over human beings. The initial arc brought Voodoo over to the team as the readers' point of view character as Helspont, a Daemonite warlord has taken control over Vice President of the United States Dan Quayle. Rob Liefeld's Youngblood co-starred in the closing chapters of the arc.
Wildcats's story continued in the mini Trilogy, penciled by Jae Lee, that introduced Hightower the Deamonite lord. Jim Lee and Marc Silvestri proceeded to publish a Killer instinct crossover detailing Warblade's connection to Marc Silvestri's Cyberforce. Penciler Travis Charest was introduced in a oneshot Wildcats special written by [[w:marvel:Howard the Duck
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