1) The Wild Storm, Vol. 1 ★★★★

Man, I really chose the best way to start off my reading year. The second volume is maybe even better than the first, though still not quite at a five star. 

IO and Skywatch are going to war! That's more or less the whole plot of this volume, though there is still some great character stuff in there. The first volume was definitely a kind of prologue to get to the meatier plot that this volume is setting up, but there's still a lot of table setting happening in this volume as well. Despite the already large ensemble, we meet some more characters in this, one of whom is my wife Jenny Mei Sparks, a bi queen who we must all stan. Even with adding a few new characters with their own plot line, this comic series still manages to never feel overstuffed. Every plot has a clear purpose and there isn't a disposable character. That's really hard to do and Ellis does it in a way that seems effortless. 

I gushed about the art in my review of volume one, and everything I said there is still applicable to this volume. Instead of repeating myself I want to talk about the colour for a second because holy crap is it amazing, especially the use of red with blacks, whites, greys, etc. in a style similar to the covers for this series. It genuinely blows my mind how good this series looks because so many comic series, especially the tonally darker ones, look like fucking garbage in an attempt to get across how gritty and serious the comic is. But instead of doing that, this decides to use colour in interesting ways and draw well-choreographed fight scenes to get across the tone. 

This series is amazing and the fact that people won't shut up about loving dark comics but don't pick up ones like these infuriates me. Read this series! It's so good!