Stormwatch: Team Achilles is an American superhero series, the second incarnation of the Image comics Stormwatch. This version was penned by Micah Ian Wright, with illustrations contributed by Whilce Portacio, C. P. Smith, Mark Texeira, Tomm Coker, Carlos D'Anda and Clement Sauve. The longest run for a penciler on the book was by Smith, who drew issues 11-19. The title featured covers by Portacio, Jason Pearson and Michael Golden. Publication history Overview Stormwatch: Team Achilles differed from the previous super-hero-centric Stormwatch groups in that it centered on a team consisting mostly of 'normal' human beings from various global Special Forces/Counter-Terrorist organizations acting as a small UN troubleshooting team. The stated mission of Team Achilles was to kill or capture criminal superhumans. The title was a super hero action series layered with satire of both politics and comic books. Real-world politics often entered the book with a storyline where the team replaced a Strom Thurmond/Jesse Helms-like Senator with a shape-shifting African superhuman and another where George Washington, reincarnated as a patriotic hero resembling Captain America, tried to overthrow the American government. The book threw potshots at President George W. Bush, mocked the ineptitude of the United Nations, and made light of modern pathos-driven corporate superheroes with mockeries of a Doctor Doom-like armored dictator character, the Justice League, the X-Men, Superman, and even Wildstorm's own premiere superhero team, The Authority. Some fans called Team Achilles "G.I. Joe for Grownups" and noted comics writer Kurt Busiek wrote "it's like Sgt. Rock, but with Superheroes." Although the enemies in the comic book have been the typical fantastic archetypes seen in comics, the weapons used by the Stormwatch team were mostly real-world weapons systems (such as the Barrett M82A1). Realistic weapons as well as tactics are used by the non-powered Team Achilles members to take down the physically superior enemies seen in the comic. Controversy The book debuted to controversy from the first issue which, due to changes in DC's printing schedule, came out not in October 2002, but instead on September 13, 2002, roughly the one-year anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. To compound the problem, the first issue featured a terrorist superhuman attack on the United Nations, which many readers thought was intended to comment on the 9/11 attacks themselves and, thus, in poor taste. Because Team Achilles (like all previous Stormwatch groups) was a United Nations entity, the book often dealt with