WorldWatch

WorldWatch is an American creator-owned comic book limited series created by Chuck Austen and published through his own Wild and Wooly Press label. It was aimed at mature readers, featuring graphic nudity, sex and violence. Three of the planned seven issues were published in 2004 before the series was cancelled. Creation At the time of the series' creation, Austen had become a hate figure within the comics industry due his work on high-profile titles such as Uncanny X-Men and The Avengers, some of which had attracted extremely negative reviews; he even claimed to have received death threats. Austen left his role as X-Men writer shortly before the first issue of WorldWatch shipped, according to him by mutual consent. During 2004 he also left his role as writer on DC Comics' Action Comics; in interviews Austen stated that editor Eddie Berganza felt the backlash against the writer was limiting sales, and refused to work under a pseudonym. Berganza instead took over writing Action Comics himself under the pen name J.D. Finn, leading to speculation that Austen was still scripting the title. However, instead Austen turned to independent comics, setting up his own Wild and Wooly imprint to publish his own superhero series, WorldWatch. Austen described the series as "superheroes meets The Shield", focusing on the characters as real people brought together by an occupation rather than by choice, with clashing ethics and values. He felt the series would do to superhero comics "what Deadwood did to westerns". He relished the challenge of building the WorldWatch universe from scratch, rather than working on established properties as he had done for Marvel and DC. The story was planned to focus on what Austen saw as the five primary characters - War Woman, Doc Gulliver, Sgt. Mercury, Intercessor and Tiger Princess. From the outset, Austen established that the series would be covering the lead-up to the group's downfall. While Austen conceded there were visual similarities to characters from the Avengers and the Justice League of America, he argued that their more abrasive personalities and creeds made WorldWatch a different proposition. He felt this "grayer world" was more fun to write, and would bring higher stakes to the story, feeling the superhero genre had grown stale.