Joe Casey's first run on WildCATS is widely considered to be the best work he's done, so expectations were reasonably high for this version.  Despite his thoroughly underwhelming recent run on Uncanny X-Men, Casey seems to be much more at home with the Eye of the Storm imprint, and the quality of his output is drastically higher over there.

WildCATS was one of the launch titles for Image back in 1992, with the premise being an intergalactic war.  Unconventionally, the war ended a while back, and since then the various incarnations of WildCATS have largely been about the characters working out what to do next.

This version of the series focusses on the Halo Corporation, a multinational which Jack Marlowe (the retired Spartan) has found himself running.  Casey's central premise is an interesting one - given that multinational corporations are more powerful than governments these days, what happens if the Halo Corporation decides to use that power to start improving things?

Casey focusses more on the corporate aspect, which he seems to identify largely with business entities.  To my mind that slightly misses the point.  We've had corporations for centuries - all they are is collections of human beings which everyone agrees to pretend are entities in their own right.  The Catholic Church is a corporation of sorts.  So is your local linedancing club.  So, for that matter, is the government.  They're all conceptual collective entities with no physical existence.

What has really made a difference in the course of the twentieth century is that developments in technology have made truly multinational entities possible.  This is why multinational corporations are more powerful than governments - if they don't like the laws in one country, they have considerable freedom to relocate to another one.  There are numerous acceptable countries prepared to compete for foreign investment by amending their laws accordingly.  The concept of governments controlling multinationals is meaningless because governments operate through laws, and multinationals can largely choose which laws to subject themselves to.  It's the ability to jurisdiction-shop which has really undermined government control, and that's why the "multinational" is much more important than the "corporation."

Nonetheless, Casey raises some very interesting points here.  The idea of the Halo corporation selling something as seemingly innocuous as a battery which never dies gets into the question of planned obsolescence.  The plot is a little overconvenient at times - "I've purchased your accounting firm" is not the sort of thing that can credibly happen without the partners noticing - but the story raises enough interesting issues to make it a promising start.

Rating: A-

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