Stop Treating the Pandemic Like It's Over

We're in a full-blown third, fourth or even fifth wave of the Covid-19 pandemic, but nobody seems to have noticed.

That's not strictly true: people are noticing that cases are rising in the US, and that the Delta variant is becoming the dominant strain of the coronavirus (if it hasn't already), but they're sitting there blaming it exclusively on people who haven't gotten vaccinated. By people, I mean pundits and random people on Twitter - hardly a day goes by when I don't see someone on there yelling at us all to get vaccinated (I have, thanks), or being derisive about unvaccinated people being hospitalized.

I find this tone worrying. As I said, I'm vaccinated, and I'm pleased that I got it so soon after it became available in my age group. I believe that the vaccine is safe and effective, and if we all got it, we'd be seeing fewer cases. I also think that those who are peddling misinformation, be it about the existence of the pandemic or the efficacy of masking or who are making baseless claims about the safety of the vaccines, are wrong.

Recently, though, I've been finding a weird equivalency between those of us who continue to wear masks and those who refuse to get vaccinated. Speaking to some neighbors the other week, outside and double-masked, I was asked if I hadn't been vaccinated. I answered that I had, but the question rattled me a little. It shouldn't be controversial for me to continue wearing a mask, and it's not the horrible imposition that some, like Tucker Carlson, seem to think it is.

Even Bill Maher (whom my girlfriend loves but I frequently find infuriating) has laughed at people who were still wearing masks outdoors, despite the fact that he got infected with Covid after being vaccinated. If anybody should appreciate the importance of continuing to take precautions, it's him - but I digress.

The fact is that California saw around 44,000 new cases last week. This article from the New York Times says that one in five new cases are in Florida, with appropriate doses of condescension for a Republican-led state, but it doesn't so much as mention California, which by this math accounts for over 10% of new cases. There are pockets of vaccine hesitancy here, which are frequently caused by politics, but it can't be the whole story.

There have to be more Covid breakthrough infections than we're hearing about - the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) itself admits that it's no longer tracking all breakthrough cases. This other article from the NYT notes that the more people you're around, even if you and they are all vaccinated, the greater your risk of encountering a viral load big enough to get you sick.

Some places are taking appropriate steps. I'm staying with my girlfriend at the moment, and the grocery/deli near her house has gone back to requiring masks indoors for all customers. When we went up to a mall in San Francisco a few weeks ago, the vast majority of people outside (we didn't go in) were wearing masks despite notices from the mall itself saying that vaccinated people didn't have to wear masks indoors.

I just think it's too early to start opening up again, and to start telling people they don't have to wear masks. More importantly, I think it's unwise to imply that the vaccine is the only thing that can save us from this pandemic, when wearing a mask is probably as important a step as getting the jab. There's still debate on the relative effectiveness of masks versus vaccines, but I think the point is, if you can do both, do both.

To sum up, if cases are rising in the US (and they are), then don't blame it exclusively on people who haven't been vaccinated. They might not be able to get it, for example because they're allergic, or they might not have gotten around to it yet. Even if they can get it, but are hesitant, telling them they're stupid and selfish is unlikely to convince them otherwise. And even with the vaccine, we shouldn't be declaring victory just yet - we may not want to admit it, but there's a long way to go to eradicate Covid completely, which should have been our goal in the first place.

Euro 2020: Done and Dusted

Well, that's another Euros in the bag. I wasn't positive about Italy's chances going into the final, since they'd be playing an England team that had been looking ever more unstoppable, and they'd be playing at Wembley, where the home support would be the twelfth man. My fears were confirmed (apparently) when Luke Shaw scored in the second minute of the game, but I was pleased that Italy regrouped, held on through a difficult first half, and then came back into it in the second.

I also had a bad feeling about penalties, but that fear was also dispelled when three of England's players missed or failed to beat the Italy keeper. I'm just sad to see that the ones who missed were all black, and my prediction that they'd come in for racist abuse has unfortunately come true.

There's been a lot of talk about racism swirling around this game for the last few days, both at an overall societal level and at a personal level, i.e. in my Facebook Messenger chats with friends before and after the match. What kicked it off was the England fans booing the Danish national anthem in the semi-final, and then doing it again to the Italian anthem this time, one of several acts that got the FA fined. English friends have predictably pointed to Italian fans booing black players in Serie A or throwing bananas at them, which is of course worse... but as we've seen for a few years, certain elements of English fandom are happy to go after black players if they're not performing to the required level, or if they're simply too "bling", which is racist code for buying themselves the stuff they were deprived of growing up.

My distaste for the anthem-booing also stemmed more from the unsporting nature of the thing, than any thought of racism, and from the lecturing that the rest of the world always gets from the English on how unsporting us foreign-types are. Yet certain subsets of the English fans seem to think that these sporting rules don't apply to them, or possibly that if they're doing something it can't be unsporting (see also diving to earn penalties).

But let's get back to the football, since it's what brought us here in the first place. I've talked about the ebb and flow of the game, how England were on top for the start, then Italy battled back and the game stayed level through extra time. It wasn't, perhaps, a game for the ages but it also wasn't a disappointing match; in fact you could say that this is the only result that made sense, since I felt the two teams were very well matched, and indeed the two best teams of the tournament.

It was also a fitting final to a tournament that I believe has been particularly fun. I've mentioned before how many more goals we've had than last time, which is one (imperfect) indicator of how teams are playing. I believe I've also talked about how this tournament has felt like a necessary catharsis for Europe after suffering so heavily from the pandemic - Italy and the UK have been overtaking each other for most deaths from Covid-19 for about a year, and essentially every country in Europe has had trouble getting it under control, or rolling out vaccines, or something else.

This is why I believe that holding the tournament across the continent wasn't the foolishness that the podcasts I listen to claim it is. That doesn't take into account the pandemic, though it doesn't seem as if it's spread particularly rapidly other than through England matches - I can certainly imagine that having 24 sets of fans converging on one location and then bringing it back to their own countries would have been worse.

From a footballing perspective, though, I think that holding the games in some of Europe's greatest stadia was a wonderful idea, because it spread the festivities around. My mom and my sister, who are currently in Rome and London respectively, could each attest to the carnival atmosphere in their cities, which they wouldn't have had if there hadn't been games in those cities. My one objection was the amount of travel that some teams were subjected to, particularly those that had to go back and forth from Baku, Azerbaijan.

Perhaps a more sensible approach would have been to award the group stages to six different countries, and then held the knockout rounds in a decreasing number of venues until we got to the final at Wembley (which I think we can all agree is probably the most iconic football stadium in Europe). Certainly it would have cut down on player fatigue, air-travel emissions and (by not holding games in Baku) authoritarian fuckery.

Still, all in all, I think this has been a great tournament, even beyond Italy winning it. It started inauspiciously, with Christian Eriksen's collapse in Denmark's first game, but fortunately he recovered, and that incident brought the Denmark team together in such a way that made them a second-favorite for many neutrals.

The football was good, and characterized by team cohesion rather than individual heroics. I just hope I can be in Europe for the next one.

Euro 2020: On to the Semis

We've now had two knockout stages, and I think it's fair to say this tournament has continued to deliver on its promise of fun. The round of 16 held its fair share of surprise results, with the biggest being Switzerland's defeat of France on penalties, while Ukraine's win over Sweden and the Czech Republic's over the Netherlands were close behind.

I watched part of the Switzerland-France game and managed to catch the first four goals. Switzerland did well to get on the scoring sheet first, but I'll admit I gave up on them when Karim Benzema scored his two goals in rapid succession, and when Paul Pogba scored his screamer not long after. I switched off, and only later did I learn that not only had the Swiss equalized, but they'd beaten the world champions on penalties. This makes it so much more disappointing that Switzerland did so badly in the next set of penalties against Spain.

The other one that caught my imagination (other than the obvious Italy match, about which more below) was Ukraine vs Sweden. At the outset this one promised to be brutally boring - for all that the Swedes are effective at getting far in tournaments, they're one of the dullest sides around. Ukraine, meanwhile, doesn't have a much better reputation, as football journalists still hold up the Switzerland-Ukraine matchup from 2006 as the dullest game in the history of football. So I was surprised to find myself captivated by this match, in which I jumped out of my chair when Ukraine scored its winning goal.

As for Wales-Denmark, I have to admit I was one of the millions that was rooting for the Danes this time, given the narrative surrounding Christian Eriksen's collapse back in the first match. That said, I wasn't expecting a 4-0 demolition (nor, presumably, were the Welsh). With that narrative in mind, I wasn't too sad to see Denmark go on to beat the Czechs in the quarterfinal, even if it meant that yet again an Eastern European team wouldn't go on to win the tournament.

England continues to have a good tournament. Not only have they not conceded a single goal yet, but they've improved markedly from the slightly ponderous team that we saw in the group stage. The 2-0 defeat of Germany wasn't too surprising to me, since the Germans had failed to convince in their own group stage, but the 4-0 against Ukraine shows that the English have found their stride, particularly striker Harry Kane. It's getting harder to imagine who can stop them - certainly it doesn't feel as if the Danes are going to be able to do it.

And to be honest, I'm not sure Italy has it in them to do it either. I don't want to get over-confident, since Italy doesn't have the greatest record against Spain, but it's hard not to look past possibly the weakest team still in the tournament, and what I see there is likely England.

In terms of overall quality, I think it's fair to say that Italy is the best team remaining. They had an easy group stage, held off a stronger than expected Austria and controlled the game against Belgium, which is still the top-ranked team in the world. But knockout games turn on a moment, and the slightest weird wobble against Spain or whoever awaits in the final would see them going home. After all, it's rarely the brightest team that wins a tournament, especially at the Euros.

The other thing that has me worried is (I hate to say this) Gigio Donnarumma. A friend of mine laughed at me when he conceded in the Austria game and I asked if we could sub in Gianluigi Buffon, but my question was sparked by what looked like panic on Donnarumma's part. Even with that fantastic defense in front of him, he suddenly looked brittle, and I haven't shaken this sense of unease about him. It's odd, because he's meant to be a great goalkeeper, but I suspect that anything that dumps Italy out will stem from him.

But I hope not! I'd love to see Italy comprehensively banish the demons of 2018 by winning this, and in a style that puts paid to foreigners' lazy stereotypes that our football is negative and cynical. And if both Italy and England are firing on all cylinders for the next two matches, then we're in for a great tournament.

Euro 2020: Done with the Group Stage

Just to follow up on the last post, I can now give the full roundup of goal statistics from the group stage (presumably to much rejoicing across multiple continents). As I noted, as of Match Day 2 there had been more goals scored in Euro 2020 than at the same time in Euro 2016, but Match Day 3 has been a feast of goals, not least because of the unexpected goalfest on Wednesday, where the two remaining Group E games produced 5 goals each, and those in Group F produced 4 goals apiece.

To put it another way, those four matches accounted for 18 goals, compared with 21 goals across the eight matches to wrap up the other four groups. And those other groups did feature some high-scoring games, such as Denmark's miraculous 4-1 defeat of Russia to snatch second place in the group and qualification for the round of 16.

Also impressive is the fact that there haven't been any more 0-0 draws since the second match day, presumably because the third-place qualifying for the knockout rounds meant that so many groups had something to play for, and so they came out to win. The podcasts I've been listening to have been pretty down on the new format, as introduced in 2016, but I wonder if it's succeeded in providing the right amount of jeopardy that's forced teams to go for wins rather than playing cagily. After all, as someone pointed out on Totally Football, England was set to face each of the four teams from Group F at some point on the day, as the ranking swung around based on who'd scored.

Admittedly it's not too inspiring that Ukraine squeaked through with a single win and two losses, beating out Finland and Slovakia on goal difference. That said, Slovakia were the architects of their own downfall by not only losing 5-0 to Spain, but by gifting them two of those goals. The best own-goal, indeed, has to be Slovakia goalkeeper Martin Dubravka jumping up to palm the ball over the crossbar, only to (inexplicably) palm it downward into his own goal.

Incidentally, the own-goal tally for the tournament is now up to 8, compared with 9 for every European Championship from 1976 to 2016 (which itself set a record, with 3 own-goals). I talked last time about why this might be happening, but it's worth noting that 3 of those 8 came from goalkeepers, and two of those were freak bounces off the keeper at an awkward time. Which just makes Dubravka's howler more inexplicable, because if he had but remembered which direction was up... alas.

This all means we're now at the business end of the tournament, where one team goes on and one team goes home. I'm cautiously optimistic about Italy's chances against Austria, but if they do win that game they have the privilege of facing either Portugal or Belgium. And if Italy manages to surmount that challenge, they'd next face likely France or Spain (or Croatia, or more remotely Switzerland) on their way to the final.

It's hard to know how to feel about Italy's showing so far: I'm used to them imploding at some point in a tournament, but what worries me is that I can't see where that implosion will come this time around. My hope is that coach Roberto Mancini has instilled a more Northern European ethos in the team, and we won't get more of those timid displays where Italy sets out to play for a draw - but you never know. At the very least, if Italy does make it to the final it'll be on the back of beating a bunch of traditionally strong teams.

And if they go on to win, it'll be a little disappointing not to be in London, as I was in 2006, to see the city's numerous Italians go nuts celebrating in the streets of the West End. But at least the tournament's on, so I won't complain too much.

Euro 2020: Better than 2016 (or at least there's been more goals)

Looking back over some of my posts from the 2016 tournament I saw something suggesting that it hadn't been a great tournament (a sentiment echoed on Football Weekly), so I decided to figure out how many goals we've had per game. the other thing that inspired me to check it out was seeing Sweden and Spain grind out a 0-0, so I wanted to see how quickly Euro 2016 had produced that scoreline.

Both tournaments have featured two 0-0 draws by the end of Match Day 2, but in 2016 those both came on the second match day, whereas for 2020 they've been spread across the two days so far. But notably, 2020 has so far been a higher-scoring tournament:

• The total goals-per-game for 2020 is 2.29, compared with 1.96 at the same point in 2016
• Match Day 1 in 2020 yielded 2.33 goals per game, while in 2016 it was just 1.83
• Match Day 2 in 2020 declined slightly to 2.25, but in 2016 it grew to 2.08
• The highest scoring game at this point in the tournament in 2016 featured 4 goals, but 2020 has so far had three games that saw 4 or more goals

The talk so far among the podcasts I listen to is that 2020 is shaping up to be more fun than 2016. That statement revolves around more than just goals, but goals are relevant to the statement in that they record moments of drama. By this reckoning, Germany's 4-2 defeat of Portugal featured six such moments, and it would be churlish to argue that those goals weren't dramatic: Portugal's early lead from a Ronaldo tap-in being eliminated by two own-goals in the first half, and then Germany scoring two further goals early in the second half.

Speaking of own-goals: so far there have been 5, prompting jokes about how Own Goal is the leading scorer of the tournament. This number certainly beats out Patrik Schick and Cristiano Ronaldo, who have each scored just three. By contrast 2016 featured just three own-goals across the entire tournament. This could be because of tiredness from the weird season-and-a-half just gone, or the fact that the teams are going for it - but either way, it's a notable side effect of all this pressing that the teams have been doing.

As for penalties, there have been four so far in 2020, and there were four at this same point in 2016, suggesting that this aspect of discipline is holding constant for the moment. For the 2016 tournament as a whole, there were 12 penalties awarded, of which 8 were scored. Wikipedia's page for Euro 2020 stats doesn't currently record the number of penalties awarded, but I'll report back if that changes.

In any case, the tournament seems to be marked by positive, attacking football, which means a lot of defenders are making mistakes (including own-goals), but also means there's a lot going on. Let's hope it continues this way into Match Day 3.

Euro 2020: Finally Here

I was all set to title this inaugural Euro 2020 post something along the lines of "Good Start", but then yesterday's horrific event happened, where Danish midfielder Christian Eriksen collapsed from what looks like a cardiac arrest, so something too triumphal felt out of place.

Luckily, he was saved, in part because the stadium where that game took place is basically right next to the best hospital in Denmark. I'm also going to forego the invidious comparisons between Danish and US healthcare, because he'd have gotten the same speed and level of care here. The main thing to say is that it's a relief they saved him, and hopefully he makes a speedy recovery.

In terms of the actual football, though, it is good that it's back. It never entirely left, of course: since last year we've had a season and a half, plus the second edition of the Nations League. And even when the 2019-20 season was interrupted, the football podcasts kept going, with retrospectives on notable games from the past.

This is different, because the crowds are back. None of the stadia are completely full, which is as it should be, since the pandemic is far from vanquished (just check out the uptick in UK cases if you don't believe me). Yet the sight of the Stadio Olimpico in Rome hosting Andrea Bocelli singing Nessun Dorma, and the pyrotechnics and choreography, is a welcome echo of the pre-Covid world. Another such echo was the sound when England scored the single goal in today's match against Croatia, that "YES" the crowd shouts in unison that has always been so satisfying to hear on Match of the Day.

My girlfriend teases me about all the nostalgic posts I write here, but it's clear that I'm not the only one thinking back to happier times during this tournament. This might just be because I listen to so many British football podcasts, but Euro 1996 and that Three Lions song (which I love, incidentally) are all over the coverage I'm seeing. 

On top of that, Bocelli singing Nessun Dorma is a direct reference back to Italia 90, when Luciano Pavarotti sang it. That World Cup was a huge touchpoint for my generation, and though it passed me by almost completely, when I got into football a few years later everybody was still talking about it... it even effectively launched the career of James Richardson, who made his name reporting on Italian football in the wake of the interest that the British public found after 1990.

The presence of the Danes is also evoking the unlikely victors of 1992, when they only joined the tournament last minute as replacements for Yugoslavia. Denmark had failed to qualify for the 8-team tournament that year, coming second to Yugoslavia, but then got called in when Yugoslavia had to withdraw owing to its civil war. It's unclear something like that will happen again this year, but the tournament frequently throws up shocks, so we'll see what happens.

The main thing that fans are responding to, I believe, is the gradual return to normalcy. It's fatuous to say that football is the single most important driver of culture in Europe, but it's notable that the pandemic was one of the few times all football ceased throughout the continent (apart from Belarus, I guess). As the Guardian's writers noted, not even the Second World War completely stopped football in England, even if the First Division had to be suspended.

I detect a sense of giddiness among the journalists and podcasters, now that the football really is coming back and the fans are back with it. Tournament summers are always sunny and pleasant in my memory, even if the years that surrounded them were pretty grim (I even found myself recalling the summer of 2008 fondly, even though the rest of the year was pretty much a shitshow for me), and this summer has already promised to be another fun one.

And frankly, why shouldn't it be? Europe is still facing the threats of the pandemic, rising far-right nationalism, trouble-making from the authoritarian countries on its fringes and the threat of its own economic and cultural irrelevance in the face of the US and China. Football, however, is the one thing Europe has that the rest of the world wants, and the European Championships are a good showcase of the strength and cultural reach of football... after all, I still remember when the networks here wouldn't carry the tournament at all.

At the same time, the Euros are a chance for the disparate countries of Europe to share their love of something, notwithstanding their fractious nature the rest of the year. Like the Eurovision Song Contest (something I resolutely do not watch), the Euros are a festival that takes no account of the politics that have taken place during the previous four years - case in point, the presence of England, despite all its moves to separate itself from the continent otherwise.

Sometimes the politics do filter in, like the glee that accompanied England being knocked out by Iceland the same week as the Brexit referendum. But in general the Euros (and the World Cup) are a big party, where everybody just gets to enjoy the football and add new memories to their series of tournament summers.

So yes, I'm glad the Euros are back, and that Italy started out strongly, and I'm even glad that English fans are parping about how "it's only bloody coming home". Because this year, amid all the death and sickness and chaos, football really has come home.

Revisiting Wildstorm: Too Many Justice League Clones

You knew it had to happen. My great comics re-read has brought me to Wildstorm comics, the line around which my interest in comics was rekindled back in 1999 or so, and which introduced me to Warren Ellis.

lI've actually been reading them for a couple of months now, having shifted from Vertigo to the America's Best Comics sub-imprint of Wildstorm (specifically League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, volume 1). Wildstorm is kind of an odd creation, since it started as one of the founding books of Image Comics, when Jim Lee decided to write and draw WildC.A.T.s, his own X-Men knock-off.

It's... not awesome, at least at first. The art was pretty good, as you'd expect, and the concept of an alien proxy war taking place on Earth was pretty fun, but WildCATs (I'm going to write it like this from now on) does feel like an overwrought Chris Claremont-era issue of Uncanny X-Men. At the time I picked up, and still own, the entire first mini-series, and I remember getting the first issue of Stormwatch, though that's a book that didn't survive an earlier declutter.

I gave up on Image after a while, and didn't think about any of it for a couple of years, until I started hearing about books like Planetary and The Authority. I can't remember exactly how I got wind of them, but it could have been the owner of a comics shop across the street from UC Irvine, who helped turn me onto a number of good books at the time, especially with his graphic novel lending library.

In the intervening years Wildstorm had expanded into its own little universe, separate from Image and then acquired by DC, and had also convinced a number of good writers to rejuvenate it. So we got Alan Moore blowing up WildCATs with his Homecoming and Gang War storylines, as well as Warren Ellis revitalizing Stormwatch. Even Gen13 got turned from a constant cheesecake-fest to a decent book, thanks to manga-enthusiast Adam Warren. Its sub-imprints also formed the home of Cliffhanger (J Scott Campbell's Danger Girl and Joe Madureira's Battlechasers) and Homage Comics (Kurt Busiek and Alex Ross's Astro City, which is another of the best comics of all time).

So the collection I still have is the initial WildCATs run from the early Image launch, a WildCATs relaunch by Scott Lobdell and Travis Charest, the Ellis and Mark Millar runs of the Authority, and Planetary. There are also a couple of stray issues of Gen13, along with the first collection from its ongoing series, but I felt a bit embarrassed reading that - there was a heavy emphasis on the female characters' state of undress and sexuality (including a dated and kind of off-putting subplot of Freefall being squicked out by Rainmaker's bisexuality), and a sense of humor that fell flat more often than not. The second storyline also featured art by Jim Lee, which should have been promising, except his poses and body shapes were all bizarrely inhuman and off-putting. That collection is slated to go to Goodwill next time I have a cull.

More successful is the Stormwatch and Authority collection. Warren Ellis used Stormwatch as a vehicle to explore some of his political and conspiratorial preoccupations, as well as interrogating the nature of superheroism through teams like The High, which were essentially thinly veiled allegories of the Justice League. Sadly I only have the A Finer World storyline, which introduced the characters and concepts he'd explore in The Authority, but it's a nice showcase of Bryan Hitch's art.

In some ways The Authority feels dated now, as the discussion of superheroes actually making the world a better place has been supplanted by unease at the idea of superheroes running around and doing whatever they want. Marvel's cinematic universe sidesteps this idea, and DC's tries to engage it but not always successfully, but the upshot is that the Authority seems dead as a concept - at the very least I can't find evidence that DC is doing anything with it now that it's integrated the Wildstorm universe into its overall DC universe.

All the same, Ellis and Hitch's issues of The Authority are gorgeous. They go by in a flash, because of the widescreen, decompressed storytelling that Ellis was playing with at the time, but Hitch's art is amazingly detailed, and helped immeasurably by Paul Neary's inks and Laura Depuy's coloring (later Laura Martin).

Then Mark Millar and Frank Quitely took over, and the book lost something. It started strong, with a story about a search for the Spirit of the 21st Century, and despite loads of violence and gore, a largely peaceful resolution of the arc. But then it fell apart with the second storyline, and went seriously off the rails with the third, when delays in Frank Quitely's art and Mark Millar's scripts meant the book took ages to come out. It had devolved into a morass of violence and snark and, frankly, facile storytelling, so that I've never really been able to warm to Millar's work since then.

And now I'm on Planetary. Like Authority, it can feel dated at times. And also like Authority, it features a staggering number of thinly veiled Justice League analogues, which makes me wonder how you can swing a cat in the Wildstorm universe without hitting a Superman clone. But it still lands as a metaphor, in which uncommon super-characters investigate how an evil Fantastic Four has distorted the world of pulp and adventure fiction by making us forget about the origins of the medium we love.

It's also helped by the gorgeous and idiosyncratic art of John Cassaday, who seems to me to be one of the most detailed comics artists I've ever seen. Bryan Hitch seems to thrive on epic vistas with starships and armies clashing, but Cassaday has an impressive grasp of facial features and dynamic movement.

Unfortunately I never got to buy the final issues, so I don't know how the story ends or how most of the mysteries that Ellis lays down are resolved. I suppose I could go looking for the trade paperbacks, but I have the sense those aren't the easiest things to find either.

Still, it's always amazing to me to imagine that Wildstorm went from an X-Men knock-off to the home of some of the best comics of the past 20 years. Even if I didn't love what Mark Millar was doing with the Authority, it was at least different from the mainstream DC and Marvel work of the time, which felt so much like the same stuff they'd been doing in the 80s and 90s.

It's also a little sad to me that the Wildstorm universe died a death - first being destroyed by a crossover and then being subsumed into the wider DC universe, so that now Superman clones like Apollo and Majestic can actually hang out with Superman. Warren Ellis tried resurrecting the universe a couple of years ago, but it didn't feel the same, like a place of infinite weirdness and possibility - rather it was just more of the same nihilism and grimness. So maybe it's my own tolerance for that type of story that's waned?