3.5 stars - Claremont and Lee reunited
I'm not a huge Chris Claremont fan. He's rightly credited for reviving the dying X-Men title in the 70's and making it the powerhouse money-making franchise it is today, but I think he lost steam midway through the 80's and never really adapted to the post-Dark Knight/Watchmen comics world. That said; I was pleasantly surprised by his 4-issue collaboration with his old X-Men partner Jim Lee on Lee's Wildcats title.
Claremont's story, collected in the Gathering of Eagles trade paperback, features his own characters the Huntsman, Miranda Tai and Alabaster Wu crashing a Wildcats training session with evil aliens in hot pursuit. The resulting conflict introduces Zealot's sister Savant, the Kherubim warlord Majestic, and Tapestry, a Lady Death-looking anti-Zealot, as well as bringing back the Triad (now called the Troika). A lot of this is your typical superhero slugfest, and with so many characters it's hard to keep track of who's who and why we're supposed to care in the first place. There's also a fair amount of patented Claremont ridiculous dialogue. Still, the Gathering of Eagles storyline seems to work for the most part, and the Claremont characters (OK, maybe just the Huntsman) are just as compelling as Lee's new faces. It's a shame Claremont never did anything further with the Huntsman and company (at least, not that I know of), because their adventures have to be more interesting than his continued efforts to keep people interested in the terribly uninteresting Excalibur cast over at Marvel.
The artwork is stunning, but has Jim Lee ever disappointed? This was Lee's last run on Wildstorm's flagship title, and he certainly went out with a bang. There are tons of splash pages and fight scenes, and the hot chicks-per-page ratio is pretty high.
A Gathering of Eagles is a definite improvement over the original Wildcats story arc, but not anywhere near as impressive as what Alan Moore would come up with in later years. Still, it's one that most Wildcats fans should enjoy, and should appeal to Claremont's fanbase as well.
