DV8: Gods and Monsters #3

Written by Brian Wood
Art by Rebekah Isaacs

Now that so much set-up is out of the way, this is starting to feel more like a Brian Wood book.

In this issue, Gem continues her tour of the strange stone-age world her and her teammates have been dumped on, going to visit Powerhaus, who has shacked up in a hut on stilts and is spending most of his days getting high with two beautiful women.  Not surprisingly, he's happy keeping things like that, and doesn't want to help Gem, who is looking to get the band back together.

This issue explores Powerhaus's personality and his power set.  Wood is taking what was a cool Warren Ellis idea (that he gets stronger and bigger in relation to the negative emotions he can absorb), and expanding on it to see what effect these powers would have a person's soul.  There's some very nice character work in this issue, which I find interesting despite the fact that I don't really know these characters.

Much of this book feels like it's a spotlight for Rebekah Isaacs's very nice artwork, which is improving with each issue.  There are some great pages here.

DV8: Gods and Monsters #2

Written by Brian Wood
Art by Rebekah Isaacs

I'm finding this series to be interesting, even though I have no real knowledge of the characters and very little is being done to fill in the backstory.  Wood has dumped these eight misfits on a strange world, and each of them seems to have found their way into a different tribe of barbarians, amazons or mystics.  Where Leon and Gem are working with the people they found, Bliss, another member of their team, is leading her tribe while posing as a goddess.

This book doesn't really read like a typical Brian Wood series at all.  It's much more a traditional superhero story, especially with the hints being dropped that these characters have been sent here for a reason (Wildstorm Secret Wars, anybody?).

Isaac's art is quite decent, and I really like this month's cover.

DV8: Gods and Monsters #1

Written by Brian Wood
Art by Rebekah Isaacs

I vaguely remember reading the first two or three issues of DV8 in its original run (because of Humberto Ramos, who I was really feeling at the time), but what drew me to this revamp was Brian Wood's name; he's one of the few writers I will buy unconditionally. 

I have no recollection of who these characters are, and Wood gives us nothing in the way of recap, choosing instead to open the story with one of the characters, Copycat, being interrogated on a Carrier (the Authority's?  I don't know) about some stuff that happened on a planet.  She begins to tell her tale, of how she fell out of the sky on some primitive planet, right into the middle of a battle between two groups of barbarians.  Her teammate, Frostbite rescues her, and goes on to tell her how the same thing had happened to him and the rest of the team, and how they have split up and are being worshiped by different factions on the planet.

Most of this issue is set-up, and doesn't really read like a typical Brian Wood comic.  There is enough here to give some hope for future issues, and Rebekah Isaacs's work is nice, if kind of standard for the Wildstorm line.  I don't really know why the decision was made to resurrect these characters from whatever limbo they were languishing in, or if this story is in the same continuity as all that World's End nonsense that is happening in the other Wildstorm titles.  My intent is to stick with this for a bit, and see if Wood does something impressive with it.