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| Monday, June 25, 2007 10:53 PM |
| More of the Take |
 by Fëanor |
Annihilation Conquest: Prologue #1
This wasn't awful, but it also wasn't - to my great relief, actually - interesting enough to make me want to start following another multi-book story arc. There's some stuff about the Kree, which I'm curious about because I kind of want to know more about Captain Marvel, but none of the characters were particularly engaging, and the story - about a race vaguely like the Borg trying to take over the universe - was pretty familiar. (I'm going to end up reading a good bit of the story anyway, as I plan to continue collecting Nova, which is one of the major titles in the story arc.)
Hedge Knight II: Sworn Sword #1
This was just okay. I know I'm going to keep collecting it pretty much no matter what because, c'mon, it's a George R. R. Martin story. And after all, it wasn't bad. Anyway, this one was just the setup story, introducing you to the main characters, giving you some background, showing us the incident that will spark the rest of the action. It's bound to pick up as it goes along.
Ultimate Galactus Trilogy
This is a hardback collection I ordered online of three connected story arcs in the Ultimate universe written by the ridiculously talented Warren Ellis. Essentially this book tells the story that's told in the movie Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer... except totally different, and with intelligence and depth. It's about Galactus coming to eat Earth, sending a silver dude (actually, a number of silver dudes) ahead, and how the Fantastic Four (along with practically every other hero in the Marvel Ultimate universe) helps stop him. But in this story, Galactus is reimagined as a hive-minded living machine that hates all sentient life and travels the universe wiping it off the face of planets and then sucking the planet dry of energy until its uninhabitable, so it can move to the next one. The Silver Surfer is never referred to as such aloud, and doesn't become a good guy, and actually there's more than one of him, and none of them are all that tough. Which is kind of refreshing, because I never got why he was so cool, anyway.
The story is brilliant, the action intense and breathtaking, the dialogue funny and clever, the characters spot on. This is Warren Ellis at his finest, telling us the kind of story he's so good at telling: a bunch of flawed humans working together, at incredible speed, doing whatever is necessary - even the unthinkable - to save all humanity from a horrific death. The cast is incredible: Captain America, Captain Marvel, Wolverine, Jean Grey, Colossus, Black Widow, Hawkeye, Professor X, Nick Fury, the Fantastic Four, Iron Man, and Thor, to name a few. One of my favorite exchanges -
Captain Marvel: Captain, do you have anything against hitting somebody while they're down?
Captain America: No, Captain. I always figured that was the best time to hit them.
There's also a great sequence where the Thing, Thor, and Johnny Storm talk about how they're going to have a keg after they kill some aliens.
The point is, fricking fantastic book. I couldn't put it down, and I laughed and gasped my way all the way through it. |
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