Amanda Cross has sent Nathan Bright to infiltrate the Sword of God as Ian Black, but now she learns that he has always been Ian Black. What leads a man to deploy the biggest terrorist event in history? Find out in The Weatherman #1 from Image Comics!
THE WEATHERMAN #1
Writer: Jody Leheup
Artist: Nathan Fox
Colorist: Moreno Dinisio
Letterer: Steve Wands
Publisher: Image Comics
Cover Price: $3.99
Release Date: January 17, 2024
Previously in The Weatherman: Nathan Bright, the titular weatherman, lives a fun-filled life on Mars until he is arrested for a terrorist attack that killed billions of people on Earth. It turns out that Nathan is Ian Black, a member of the Sword of God, the terrorist cell responsible for the attack. But he wiped his mind and does not remember any of his previous life. To stop another attack, Amanda Cross sends Nathan to infiltrate the Sword of God so they can locate the leader. And as he does this, Cross discovers that Black never actually wiped his mind in the first place.
WHO IS IAN BLACK?
The Weatherman #1 is back! I cannot tell you how excited I was to see this title. This is also a decent jumping on point, as we learn more about Ian Black and his past life. What made him who he was, and how did Nathan Bright fit into his world? The book opens on Earth when Ian comes home from the military. His parents seem happy to see him, and his dad is particularly enthusiastic. But when Ian sent his medals home, his dad keeps them in his closet. There is no room to display them, because his own sports memorabilia fills up the house.
Ian’s friends throw him a surprise party. His high school girlfriend Ember taps him on the shoulder, and he nearly strangles her. He has some new, learned reflexes. In the memories of his friends, we see a glimpse of Nathan Bright – the kid who did all the crazy, goofy things in school. But that is not him anymore.
A few years later, he is in the park with his young daughter. They’re trying to figure out what to do the following weekend. She wants to tour a weather station because she wants to be a weather scientist when she grows up. She even has a toy lightning bolt she carries with her. Then she says she wants to live with him. It turns out that Ian married Ember, but they are already divorced. He wants to see his daughter more; Ember does not think it is a good idea. He is not responsible enough.
Three days later he joins the ORCA program, a special advanced warfare unit. Amanda Cross learns this from an informer known as Djinn who knew him from the Sword of God, where she was part of Jenner’s inner circle. The missions they were sent on were high risk, often involving death. It was the cognitive dissonance of war for peace – to improve humanity they carried out acts that were its antithesis. Jenner and Ian started out as comrades but grew apart. Ian was an optimist. Jenner was a realist. He felt that the problem with humanity was humans.
The ORCA program was defunded, but later Black met Jenner again. Jenner had a grand plan to wipe out war entirely. This involved wiping out WMD’s where they could find them. Black could, and did, go along with this, right up until he learned that Jenner was not destroying them, as he had said he would do.
THE COMPLICATED PAST
The Weatherman #1 shows us how Nathan and Ian can be the same person. Life is complicated. His friends remember high school Ian as being someone very much like the Nathan we met at the very beginning of the series. A stint in the military changes him, but we also see the disconnect between him and his father. His father is so consumed with himself that Ian is relegated to a back corner in his life. In turn, he tries hard to make good connections with his daughter, and it looks like he can. Their affection is genuine, and it may be the only deep connection he has made with anyone in his life.
The Earth we see, pre-virus, is bright and optimistic. It is a future, but it is one that connects with our present. There are details like holographic signs, fancy vehicles, and futuristic buildings that give it that feeling, but there is also a lot of nature. I think this puts a whole new angle on the Sword of God attack. What we see here is not a dystopian Earth where people have been left behind. Yet there is a constant feeling of darkness in the military and para-military organizations Ian becomes involved in.
BOTTOM LINE: CRACKS IN THE SHELL
The Weatherman #1 reaches deeply into Ian Black’s past with a strong commentary on how people can approach the same problem completely differently. Does the end justify the means?
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The Weatherman #1
Nathan Bright is Ian Black, and he is more complicated than we realized.
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Writing9
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Art9
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Coloring9
By day, she’s a mild-mannered bureaucrat and Ms. Know-It-All. By night, she’s a dance teacher and RPG player (although admittedly not on the same nights). On the weekends, she may be found judging Magic, playing Guild Wars 2 (badly), or following other creative pursuits. Holy Lack of Copious Free Time, Batman! While she’s always wished she had teleportation as her superpower, she suspects that super-speed would be much more practical because then she’d have time to finish up those steampunk costumes she’s also working on.