Tpull's Weekly Marvel Comics Review – Part 2
Realm of Kings: Imperial Guard 4
by Dan Abnett, Andy Lanning, and Kevin Walker
The squad in the Fault has been cut off, but Mentor devises a unique way to have Oracle get a message to Gladiator: using Quasar’s energy bands to tap into the M’kraan Crystal! The group tries to fortify their ship by moving hulks of other starships over and welding them in place to act as a type of armor. Ch’od finds his hyperdrive capacitor sabotaged, and it only takes a few seconds for Mentor to figure out it must be the newest replacement on the team, Smasher. Upon confronting him, he reveals himself to be the Raptor Talon.
Talon claims to be on the side of the Shi’ar, but he still weaves his lies to lay the blame for Lilandra’s death upon Darkhawk. The creatures from the Fault arrive to attack, and Starbolt has his containment suit ripped up. Instead of discorporation like DC’s Wildfire, he goes nuclear like Firestorm. Can he re-form? Probably, but we don’t find out this issue.
Kevin Walker is not my favorite artist, but after the last three Marvel comics I read, he’s a frikkin’ genius, altering the colors for the backgrounds and giving us some exciting aliens to go with the action. We end with Gladiator showing up, running to their aid. As the leader of the Shi’ar, his advisors try to argue that he is too valuable to risk in direct combat situations anymore, but he is the strongest single force they have. It might have had more dramatic tension if they didn’t show how eager he was to rush back into the fight. Just one or two more places showing him reflecting on the need for the leader to remain safe where he can direct things might have been better than his constant chafing at being out of the fight. All in all, shaping up to be a pretty good series.
Strange 4
by Mark Waid and Emma Rios
The story feels a little whimsical. Perhaps that is just a reflection of the credits and how they are portrayed in the beginning, and perhaps a dash of it is Emma Rios’ style, which has a more manga look that does not do well to convey seriousness. Stephen instantly contacts every magic-wielder on Earth and asks them to not use magic for an hour so he can fix everything. Then he goes to conduct surgery on Eternity itself. It’s not a bad concept. The Silver Dagger shows up to slit Stephen’s throat while his astral self is tying to save the universe. The story falls down a little there, because the dude is smart enough to realize that Stephen will be helpless with the stakes so high, but he doesn’t seem to grasp that if Stephen fails, everyone in the world might die.
Casey lets Larry the demon hold onto her soul so she can tackle Silver Dagger, but she has to use the vanishing spell to accomplish that task, which means a pissed-off Baroshtok shows up to claim her as a consequence. Stephen may have saved the universe, but he just lost his new apprentice. Larry hands Stephen her soul, though, and reasons that he may be able to get Casey back. It’s not a bad ending, but it occurs right during the time when Brother Voodoo was supposed to be the sorcerer supreme. Instead, his series is cancelled. I’m not sure where Marvel is going with this, but they have really lost a lot of momentum concerning their magical characters. We could have a lot of good stories in this area, but all we get are little miniseries like these.
Long story short, the plot is not as good as Waid usually gives us, and the art makes me think it might be a cool gift in trade format for younger girls to read. There isn’t too much meat to it.
Ultimate Armor Wars 4
by Warren Ellis and Steve Kurth
We burn through half the comic to move the plot from Tony drowning, to making out with Justine again, to fighting some more armored opponents, all to position him as captive of Howard Stark Sr., Tony’s grandpa. Howard outs Justine as a plant, and the Ghost hands over a box of Tony’s that has tight security. What’s in it is a severed head of a Tony Stark from an alternate universe that he found with the help of Reed Richards when they were goofing off with a multiversal gate. The tech in it shuts down other technology, and appears to knock out the Ghost, and maybe even kill Justine and Howard. Tony gets drunk in front of his alternate universe severed head.
This series was cool just for allowing me to type that last sentence. Kurth’s art is serviceable all the way through, and if he has to give us a potentially bland background, he gives us some clouds in the sky, and shows us debris from a plane being ripped up. He doesn’t just give us a blank color. I don’t know if the grandpa twist saves the whole mini-series, but the severed head is classic Warren Ellis, giving us a little something neat of an idea and playing around with it. The three issues building up to it were a little meaningless, but it allowed him to move all the pieces around and introduce the characters to get us to the final scene, so if you have the patience, you might find it worthwhile. I’m on the fence. If I could have just bought the final issue, I would have.
New Avengers: The Promise
by Paul Tobin, Craig Rousseau, and Richard Elson
I’ve only done a review of one of these Army & Air Force Exchange Service comics before. Marvel puts them out free for the troops, so if you have a friend who can get on base, ask him to grab a copy for you. This is the eighth in the series, and the artists aren’t the big-wigs, so you won’t find David Finch on the interiors, but you might recognize Paul Pelletier’s style for the cover.
Bucky-Cap shows up to give the troops in Afghanistan an MRAP and some goodies for supplies, and the reason he’s there is to make good on a promise. We flash back to Steve Rogers as Cap during World War II, when Barnes was just plain old Bucky. The intercuts with the present that allow for the modern soldiers to comment on the story feel modern and real, and the flashback story is okay too. The punchline relates to the reason Bucky is paying back his debt to the troops by replacing something he lost to another soldier back in the war. It’s a solid story that’s not too sappy, and I enjoyed it more than half the Marvel titles I read this week.
Tpull is Travis Pullen. He started reading comics at 5 years old, and he can't seem to stop.
