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Thursday 31 October 2013 in , ,

Annihilation Prologue

Annihilation: Prologue (2006) one-shot
Prologue is a fast-paced opening to the cosmic event. We know it's a Marvel Cosmic (with a capital C) event when Thanos appears on the first page and within the next few pages the Kyln maximum security prison and power station is destroyed as the first of the Annihilation Wave come through through the interstellar energy cascade nearby.

Quickly introduced are Richard Rider and the Nova Corps, Drax and Cammi (remember the little girl from Alaska?), Ronan the Accuser (Kree), Silver Surfer and Super-Skrull (though he's not named in the issue). The home planet of the Nova Corps, Xandar, is realised excellently with the immense size and power of the Corps shown off. Very quickly Xandar is attacked and devastated. The pages where the Annihilation Wave suddenly appears and the Corps overwhelmed are epic. We're shown glimpses of the Kree and Skrulls before the reveal of who is masterminding the Annihilation Wave... Annihilus, the insectoid ruler of the Negative Zone.

It's a great single issue and sets up the event incredibly dramatically. I much prefer Keith Giffen's scripting here on a cosmic scale than the close-up Drax mini-series. The art is great by Scott Kolins and Ariel Olevetti (some dynamic panelling though there are some awful computer-generated blurs that really detract from the visual storytelling) and there's definitely a nod to Moebius in the spaceship and alien city designs. I really like the time-stamping at the start of each scene so we get to know the timespan of events: it starts the day before the invasion (which is called Annihilation Day) and the Prologue ends 16 days later. I'm guessing that "day" would be some sort of inter-galactic day rather than earth day. Also, at the end of the single-issue of Prologue are some great extras: information about the Corps, Annihilus, Thanos plus a glossary and map. By the end of reading this there's a great sense that the event has been realised in great detail.
The big reveal... Annihilus is behind the Annihilation Wave.




Wednesday 30 October 2013 in , , ,

Before Annihilation: Drax the Destroyer miniseries (2005)

Drax issue 1 (2005)

Drax the Destroyer #1-4

This miniseries precedes the Annihilation event by a few months. In the fourth issue there's an editorial in which readers are told that the comic "is just the tip of the iceberg. What we've really done is give you a glimpse or a preview of what is to come".

More or less this is a re-boot, or at the very least another "resurrection", of the Drax the Destroyer character. The story, by Keith Giffen, is fine but Mitch Breitweiser's art - helped enormously by Brian Reber's colouring - is great: he draws figures in epic poses against expansive skylines beautifully.

Drax is on board a spaceship heading for Kyln, a maximum security prison. The other prisoners include Paibok the Skrull, the Blood Brothers and a pretty menacing villain called Lunatik. The spacecraft crashes near Coot's Bluff in Alaska. The Drax who survives the crash is large and brutish: very Hulk-like and, over the course of the four issues, transforms into the Drax that Marvel seem to be using now. Much of what happens involves the Blood Brothers and Lunatik fighting with Drax, while the crafty Paibok enslaves the townsfolk of Coot's Bluff and forces them to work on repairing the damaged spaceship. Drax is befriended by a small girl called Cammi who is fascinated by the aliens she sees. At the end of the second issue Drax is stabbed through the head by Paibok and apparently killed. What seems to happen is that Drax starts to "cook" and out of the baked body, a smaller Drax climbs - with the distinctive red markings on his shoulders. When Cammi asks him why he changed Drax explains: "I am restored. Once again the Destroyer."



He finds that he has lost some of his powers - like power blasts - but he has gained a greater perception: there's a great sequence where Drax walks across a mountainside in the rain and is exhilarated by the experience. The Blood Brothers, who have a Wolverinish scent ability, claim that they smell Cammi when they find Drax. The two have "bonded" in some way. At the end Paibok sends a distress call and a second prison ship picks Drax and Cammi up.

There's not a great deal of Annihilation in this series. It's more of a prologue to the Prologue. Presumably the purpose was to rebirth Drax and give him a child to defend against the Annihilation Wave.




Monday 28 October 2013 in , , ,

Before Infinity there was Annihilation


Marvel's current event, Infinity, has the Avengers deep in space fighting the Builders - who seem to be the original architects of the universe - while the mad Titan, Thanos, attacks a seemingly defenceless Earth. There's a lot more to this event as it appears to involve the fall-out from Age of Utron, Uncanny Avengers and New Avengers. For a lot of casual readers Infinity is too rich, too complex and involves far too many characters. It requires a good deal of concentration and - like many of Hickman's titles - the payoff may be a little time coming. It has an incredibly fast pace and draws on long-running cosmic history that goes right back to the early 1970s.

It's not the first time that Marvel has involved its universe in an all-out cosmic war. Perhaps the first one was the Kree-Skrull War in the pages of The Avengers in 1971-2. In the 1990s the various Infinity  conflicts involving Thanos and Adam Warlock plunged regular Marvel heroes into vast intergalactic events.

The big question for me, someone who wasn't reading Marvel at that time, is whether the 2006 Annihilation storyline and its 2007 sequel are connected to what's currently happening in the Marvel Universe. Over the next few weeks I'm going to discuss the various titles that constituted Annihilation and ask the question: does it stand up today as a decent comic series worth reading?