WildC.A.T.s: Covert Action Teams #3
WildC.A.T.s #3 represents an early, concrete demonstration of the shared Image Universe in action: Jim Lee's flagship Wildstorm team clashes head-on with Rob Liefeld's Youngblood in a co-founder crossover that no mainstream publisher had attempted in quite this way — two creator-owned properties colliding within weeks of each publisher's launch. The issue is part three of the four-chapter 'Compendium' arc, the debut storyline that established the Kherubim-versus-Daemonite mythology underpinning the entire Wildstorm Universe. As part of that arc, it was later collected in the 1993 WildC.A.T.s: Compendium trade paperback, one of Image's earliest collected editions. The cover itself — pencilled by Lee and finished with Rob Liefeld — is one of the few pieces of original art jointly produced by two Image co-founders during the company's founding period.
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Written by Jim Lee and Brandon Choi with interior art by Lee and inker Scott Williams, issue #3 arrived with a December 1992 cover date as the penultimate chapter of what the indicia had originally billed as a three-issue miniseries — the story expanded to four parts due to the characters' breakout popularity. The cover was a joint effort between Lee and Liefeld, reflecting the deliberate cross-pollination strategy the Image founders employed to knit their separate studios into a cohesive shared universe during the company's founding months. The issue was produced under Lee's WildStorm Productions banner and, after DC's 1998 acquisition of WildStorm, the characters and their stories became part of the broader DC/WildStorm continuity.
Trivia · 8 facts
- Story title: '...the Big Beat Down!' — Part 3 of 4 of the opening 'Compendium' arc, written by Jim Lee and Brandon Choi with interior art by Jim Lee and Scott Williams.
- Cover by Jim Lee and Rob Liefeld — a joint production by two Image Comics co-founders, tying the WildC.A.T.s and Youngblood franchises together visually.
- Youngblood — Chapel (Bruce Stinson), Combat, Diehard, Shaft (Jeff Terrell), Vogue (Nikola Voganova), and Bedrock (Thomas John McCall) — guest-star as government-sanctioned adversaries; their first appearances were in Youngblood #1 (April 1992), making this a major early Image Universe crossover rather than a debut issue.
- The plot turns on Youngblood mistakenly attacking the WildC.A.T.s to 'protect' Vice President Dan Quayle, who is secretly possessed by the Daemonite agent B'lial — a satirical political subplot woven through the entire opening arc.
- Warblade kills the Daemonite M'Koi mid-issue, one of the first significant character deaths in the series.
- Villains present include Helspont, Pike, the Gnome, and the Tri-Ad faction (Attica, H.A.R.M., and Slag), consolidating the Cabal threat ahead of the arc's finale in issue #4.
- The issue was reprinted in the WildC.A.T.s: Compendium trade paperback (1993), one of Image Comics' earliest collected editions, which bundled issues #1–4 alongside the #0 prequel.
- The series was originally solicited as a three-issue miniseries; the expansion to four issues — of which this is the penultimate chapter — was driven by the title's immediate commercial success at launch.