This week DC Comics releases the Wildstorm 30th Anniversary Special. The oversized one-shot features new and reprinted stories from Wildstorm creators past and present. Among the stories included in the special, as revealed in a preview released by DC late last week, is a reprint of “Requiem,” a story starring The Authority from team’s original creators, Warren Ellis, Bryan Hitch, Paul Neary, and Laura Martin, with letterer Josh Reed.
While the reprinting of “Requiem,” originally published along with multiple other stories from this week’s one-shot in the Wildstorm: A Celebration of 25 years hardcover, isn’t the first time previous work from Ellis has been represented in a new format, its inclusion in a high-profile anniversary one-shot marks a single-issue periodical return for Ellis to DC following the dozens of allegations of predatory behavior and misconduct that surfaced in mid-2020. The allegations against Ellis were the proverbial crest of a wave of sexual misconduct accusations against comics creators both high-profile and up-and-coming. At the time, Ellis and Hitch were in the middle of a series for DC, The Batman’s Grave, which the publisher saw through to its conclusion, though it’s likely Ellis’s writing for the twelve-issue series had already been completed before the allegations surfaced. Another Ellis-written story for DC, a planned two-pager from a Dark Nights: Death Metal tie-in one-shot, was pulled by the publisher in the wake of the allegations.
The organization So Many Of Us, a group made up of more than 60 victims of Ellis’s alleged misconduct, reported earlier this year that they had entered into a mediated conversation with Ellis, with a goal of transformative justice to prevent future harmful behavior from Ellis or others. Elaborating on that in their last update, So Many Of Us stated:
[…] our goal is to transform harm, not “cancel” Warren Ellis (or anyone else). We cannot and will not sign off on his moral progress. We decline to be the authority on who is allowed to work in what context. We reaffirm our support for the right of creators to be paid for their work, as well as the right of publishers, creatives, and others to determine who they work with.
It’s hard to argue with the influence that Ellis had on Wildstorm, particularly when it comes to his and Bryan Hitch’s work on Stormwatch and The Authority. The inclusion of an Ellis-written story in the new anthology hasn’t been promoted previously, though. When the Wildstorm 30th Anniversary Special was initially solicited, the writer credits were listed as “MATTHEW ROSENBERG, JOSHUA WILLIAMSON, BRANDON CHOI, J. SCOTT CAMPBELL, BRETT BOOTH, ED BRISSON, and more!” The solicit text also mentioned the reprints specifically as including “stories by Jim Lee, J. Scott Campbell, Brett Booth, Dustin Nguyen and more.” Beyond the solicitations, typically with these anthology one-shots, which DC’s been doing multiple times a year for a few years now, the publisher will release a listing of the full contents of the anthology prior to the book’s final order cutoff date. That was not the case with this one-shot, with the full story and creator line-up only having been released late last week prior to a long holiday weekend in the U.S.
DC Comics has not yet responded to request for comment from The Beat. So Many Of Us declined to comment on DC’s publication of the story, though their stance on Ellis’s continued work has already been made fairly clear in their last update.
The Wildstorm 30th Anniversary Special is out in stores and digitally tomorrow.
Updated 11:44 AM Eastern with response from So Many Of Us.
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