a while back I reread all my cloak and dagger comics and talked about them here. I realize this is something I may do time to time because comics are getting pricey and it's much cheaper to go back and reread things I haven't read in a long time. This time I reread Warlock and the Infinity Watch and much of the comics that tied into the book.
One of the first things I thought rereading this series was that I couldn't believe that I forgot how good it was. The title started out as Jim Starlin doing a Keith Giffen era of the Justice League type book since it's a team of oddballs stuck together in a team and their personalities clash for comic effect. Though the humorous tone only lasted in for the first half of the series or so.
also now that I look at it both teams where formed due to events in company wide big event cross overs, JLI form Legend and Warlock and the Infinity Watch from the Infinity Gauntlet.
The problem with Warlock and the Infinity Watch was that the titled was tied into the Infinity whatever series, so not only did you need to read the Infinity Gauntlet to understand why the team was formed (or at least read wiki page for the mini series) for the first 2 years of the title you would have to read extra miniseries (and each event added an extra title you needed to read) to understand whats going on.
At least that was the problem when the series just game out, but rereading it with when you have all of the books it's easy to spot another problem this series faced around the time of the Infinity Crusade cross over and the Thor/Strange/Warlock & crew cross over that followed it...the quality in the art slipped.
It's understandable that with deadlines from time to time an the art of an issue wont be as good as it should be since the artist rushed to get the book out on time. But at the time the book was rotating between to artist Angel Medina and Tom Grinberg.
I think in Grinberg's case he may have been trying a new style that was similar to the styles of the founders of image comics since that look was popular at the time.
the art picked backup when Pat Oliffe became the series artist at issue 29.
during the last year or so of the title Jim Starlin left the title to do a creator owned book at Malibu comics and John Arcudi took over as writer. John Arcudi run of the book was good but my only complainant was that he didn't seem to get the character Thanos right and reduced the character into your typical villain wanting revenge.
After reading the series one thing I can say is that I wouldn't mind seeing the character Maxam used again.
BE WARNED DOWN BELOW BE SPOILERS
don't read if you want to find out the secret of Maxam by reading the comic and not some guy's blog post
ok here it is.
the character wasn't really developed much but a Black guy form the future sent to the past to stop the guy that will grow up to destroy worlds is an interesting base to start form. More so when it's revealed that the guy he must stop is currently a superhero.
though I realize that there may not be much demand for the character. For most of his run he had no memory of who he was and so the character was pretty much a blank slate (thought that worked fine for Wolverine) and I am sure many fans didn't like the character when it was revealed that he was sent to kill Adam Warlock. But I think the last part is what makes him interesting since it basically asked the question if you could go back in time and kill baby Hitler would you.
and that's where the character Maxam is at, sure as Adam Warlock he didn't do anything wrong and was in fact a good person...but Maxam lived through (or after I'm not sure) the horrors that he will cause later in life.
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