Stormwatch #48
☆ Be the first to review + Add to your collection — Join freeStormwatch #48 is the opening chapter of 'Change or Die,' the three-part finale to Warren Ellis's transformative Volume 1 run — and it serves as the direct narrative launchpad for The Authority, one of the most influential superhero titles of the late 1990s. The issue introduces the Changers, a group of radical idealist superhumans whose prototype Engineer and Doctor would be reborn as founding members of The Authority, making this issue the conceptual seed for those enduring characters. Ellis frames Henry Bendix's growing authoritarianism against the Changers' utopian agenda, a thematic collision that crystallised the 'superheroes who actually change the world' ethos that would define The Authority and reshape mainstream superhero storytelling for years afterward. As the last major story arc to bear the Image-era Stormwatch banner, it also marks the formal pivot of the WildStorm universe toward the grittier, post-heroic sensibility that Ellis had been building since issue #37.
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We Buy Collections ▸History
Warren Ellis took over Stormwatch with issue #37 (July 1996) after the book had stalled creatively under earlier writers, given relatively free editorial reign to reshape a series whose sales had been modest at best. By the time he reached #48, he was simultaneously writing Transmetropolitan and had fully evolved his signature voice — political satire, science-fiction extrapolation, and morally complex superhumans — which he poured into 'Change or Die' as a deliberate capstone. Tom Raney served as Ellis's consistent artistic collaborator across the run, with Randy Elliott inking and Gina Going-Raney providing colors; editor Mike Rockwitz oversaw production. The arc was structured as a tight three-parter that Ellis himself later acknowledged left him with fewer ideas for the subsequent Volume 2, implying 'Change or Die' was conceived as a genuine endpoint that only continued because the book was relaunched rather than cancelled outright.
Trivia · 8 facts
- Cover date: May 1997; published by Image Comics (WildStorm imprint); 32 pages, story chapter 23 pages. Written by Warren Ellis; pencils by Tom Raney; inks by Randy Elliott; colors by Gina Going-Raney; letters by Bill O'Neil; editor Mike Rockwitz.
- First appearance of the Changers as a group: Blind, the Doctor (first incarnation), the Eidolon, the Engineer (first incarnation), Rite, Smoke, and Wish all debut in this issue.
- The Doctor and Engineer introduced here are the original, mortal versions — prototypes whose roles as 'the Doctor' and 'the Engineer' were later inherited by successor characters who became founding members of The Authority.
- The issue is part 1 of the three-part 'Change or Die' arc (issues #48–50), the final story arc of Stormwatch Volume 1, in which Henry Bendix's megalomania is fully exposed and the ideological groundwork for The Authority is laid.
- Jenny Sparks survives an assassination attempt by Blind (who uses paralytic and poisoned needles) in this issue — the opening action beat that draws her directly into conflict with the Changers and Bendix.
- Malcolm King (Strafe), Battalion's estranged brother, appears here as an unstable defector feeding intelligence to the Changers, deepening the personal stakes for Jackson King.
- The issue has been reprinted at least four times: in the DC 1999 'Change or Die' trade paperback, in DC's 2012 and 2013 Stormwatch collected editions, and in the 2025 'StormWatch: The Road to the Authority Compendium.'
- Jenny Sparks was named the 44th Greatest Comic Book Character by Empire magazine in 2006, and the 'Change or Die' arc — beginning here — is central to the Stormwatch stories that defined her character before The Authority.
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Reprints
Reprinted in StormWatch #[3] (1999), StormWatch #2 (2013), StormWatch #2 (2014), StormWatch: The Road to the Authority Compendium #[nn] (2025)
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