StormWatch Vol 1 48

StormWatch #48
Previous Issue	StormWatch #47
Next Issue	StormWatch #49
Art by: Tom Raney
Cover Date	May, 1997
Issue Details
Original Price	$2.50

1. "Change or Die part 1"
Appearances · Synopsis
Writer(s)	Warren Ellis
Penciler(s)	Tom Raney
Inker(s)	Randy Elliott
Letterer(s)	Bill O'Neil
Editor(s)	Mike Rockwitz

Appearing in "Change or Die part 1"

Featured Characters:

• StormWatch
  • Battalion
  • Jenny Sparks
  • StormWatch Prime
    • Fuji
    • Hellstrike
    • Winter
  • Rose Tattoo
  • Synergy

Villains:

• alt. Henry Bendix (Disguised as Weatherman)
• Changers (First Appearance)
  • Blind (First Appearance)
  • The Doctor (First Appearance)
  • The Eidolon (First Appearance)
  • |The Engineer (First Appearance)
  • The High
  • Rite (First Appearance)
  • Smoke (First Appearance)
  • Wish
• Strafe
• Samuel John Fleisig

Locations:

• Wildstorm Universe
  • Africa
  • Germany
  • Paraguay
  • United States of America
    • Nevada
      • Nevada Garden (First Appearance)
  • Skywatch II

Items:

• 
  

Vehicles:

• 
  

Synopsis for "Change or Die part 1"

Jenny Sparks is ambushed on the street by the masked vigilante Blind.  He sticks with her paralyzing needles intended to kill her, but she pulls them out in time to save herself.  Afterward, she tries to contact Weatherman.  Aboard Skywatch, Battalion and Synergy observe as a computer successfully identifies the woman who activated the powers of killer Sam Fleisig. Weatherman briefs Stormwatch Prime on the High, an American superhero from the late 1930s who has suddenly vanished after ten years sitting motionless atop a Rocky Mountain peak.  Once Skywatch finds him, Bendix wants the team to apprehend or kill him.  He also tells them to not inform Jenny of this mission.  In Paraguay, Strafe meets with the High and his team of superhumans, the Changers.  He offers them intelligence on Stormwatch, but, fearing he might be a spy, they assign Blind to interrogate him.  The High has spent the last decade devising a new model for society, and the Changers are ready to begin implementing it.  The Engineer travels to the Nevada desert and seeds it with nanotech to produce all physical goods people need.  In Africa, the gun-toting Smoke wipes out a military dictatorship.  In Germany, the Eidolon, who has come back from the dead, tells a gathering of Christians there is no God.  Back on Skywatch, Weatherman asks Rose Tattoo how the Changers can be stopped; having once been one of them, she says to kill them all.

Notes

• This issue is reprinted in:
  • StormWatch: Change or Die trade paperback (1999);
  • StormWatch Volume Two hardcover (2013).

Trivia

• Most of the Changers are broadly analogous to historical comics or pulp fiction characters:
  • Blind to Batman;
  • the Doctor to Dr. Strange;
  • the Eidolon to the Spectre;
  • the High to Superman, specifically the Golden Age Superman;
  • Rite to Wonder Woman;
  • Smoke to the Shadow.