Oh Thank Heavens the Raccoon is here!

I knew it. I saw @Marvel post a tweet last night, and I just knew it was going to be good. I left milk and cookies out for my comic news Santa and OH BOY IT’S CHRISTMAS MORNING COME EARLY!

Just scroll down and take a look at Kevin’s sexy post about the most awesome of news coming down the wire from Marvel as Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning continue to look to the skies and dream of greatness.

From the press release:

Editor Bill Rosemann added “Take the assembled majesty of Marvel’s most powerful heroes, add on the cult-fave duo of Rocket Raccoon and Groot, pile on a ridiculous amount of writing and artistic talent, and top it all off with cool covers by Alex Garner and the one and only Mike Mignola. That, True Believers, is a recipe for face-melting, brain-frying, pedal-to-the-metal, that’s-why-I-read-comics awesomeness.

Hell yeah.

Since 2006, Marvel’s cosmic adventures have been turned upside down, starting with the very first Annihilation event, orchestrated by Keith Giffen. The threats were galactic in nature, the heroes small and powerful against the forces of true evil. While Civil War brought life-changing political stories to the Marvel Comics page, Annihilation brought back the wider-scope, cast-of-thousands style storytelling that made things like Secret Wars and the Infinity Gauntlet part of a True Believer’s vocabulary. From the first Annihilation came Annihilation: Conquest and the same life-and-death symphony was played for our enjoyment. Civilizations crumbled, characters struggled with new responsibilities and the weight of the galaxy came down on some very unusual shoulders. While they might have doubted themselves, and wrestled with the infectious Phalanx and the unbeatable Ultron to the point of personal destruction, the reader can’t doubt these characters and these stories. They paid off once before and they did so again, promising a new era of cosmic heroes in the form of the new Guardians of the Galaxy.

I was so sold on those books by the time they were solicited. The Guardians of the Galaxy weave in a lot of amazing elements with great space adventure, and I now care more about a giant sentient space tree than I do about a lot of X-Men. Abnett, Lanning and Giffen took two years and created a universe to explore, and I felt confident signing up for anything and everything they did.

Then came the War of Kings.

Our great and powerful orchestra started to sound a little discordant, but not in a bad way. The message was still powerful, there were still civilizations at stake and great men fought with a great purpose, but … no longer were the villains ultimately wrong. Sure, Vulcan was a nutcase who should have been killed off a long time ago, but the Shi’ar people got caught up in something they never should have been party to. The Kree were now led by the Inhumans, a move that really looks like insult to injury; the Inhumans were created to be this sub-race for the powerful Kree and now at their weakest, they were being controlled by those they sought to control for eons. Kind of cool and poetic for the Inhumans, but since we’ve been following the Kree in the tales of Annihilation, a little like kicking an entire nation while it’s down. In the end, the solution to the reign of Emperor Vulcan would lead to a greater threat than that madman could provide.

The Thanos Imperative brought this all to a finale. Not just an end, as storylines start and end every month as comics do every month, but a finale. Like we’ve watched something gripping and tragic and exciting that has finally come to a conclusion that made me think that the musicians are going to put down their instruments and not play anymore. Again, the quality of story never ever diminished, Abnett and Lanning continued to bring the best to every issue, epic in scope and grand in scheme and thought. I suppose I feel that I didn’t get enough of a dessert for all the meat and potatoes we ate; I mean, from War of Kings, I’d been hoping for some sort of huge return for all the loss suffered; the Shi’ar are a wreck, the Kree still have the usurpers ruling over them, Ronan the Accuser is sort of a pussy cat now thanks to Crystal (how long before she cheats on him, any bets?), a great rift had opened up in space… something needed to happen.  For the triumphs and tragedy of the Star Wars saga to give up the best payback, Darth Vader had to make that face turn and get some peace in his last moments thanks to redemption. The rebels had to win with a sense of celebration. We needed to rebuild with a sense of the future, at harmony with the losses of our past.

Instead, two of the most human characters in the cosmic side of the Universe are gone: Nova and Star Lord were left to face the Mad Titan, who’s just been dumped by Death again. The Cthulhu-verse has been ‘closed’ and, again, the day is saved, but this is the second major cosmic event to return things to less than zero. I’ve seen so much cosmic joy from past stories that the last two have been just sort of … less joyous. The Thanos Imperative left me sort of looking out a big window into the vastness of a space with a woman that may or may not be my sister and two robots, all wondering just when space got so big that adventure couldn’t be seen from the deck of your spaceship.

The Thanos Imperative is definitely our Empire Strikes Back. Characters have been challenged with personal demons, some have lost, new revelations are made and yeah, it’s a down ending. Personally, I’ve been in a sort of Cosmic Adventure Ennui; what could possibly come that could make things better than the past or resolve the tragedy of the present?

Annihilators #1

BAM. The Annhilators. In one word I am renewed in my hope that the cosmic side of Marvel will never lose their touch of grand adventure, dire threat and human triumph. They are going back to the name that made them great. They are the greatest cosmic heroes you could gather, and they are taking up where the rag-tag bunch of characters left off. Yeah, this isn’t the end of the Guardians of the Galaxy. This isn’t even the end of Nova and Star-Lord (after all, he did say the Cosmic Cube had “maybe a couple of charges left”). Sure, it maybe a mini-series, but that’s how all this started. Marvel has a good thing going with Abnett and Lanning and the cosmic side of their universe, and they would be fools to let it all go. Since 2006, readers could turn their eyes to stars to get a Star Wars sense of adventure, where science and the unknown meet in the middle for fantastic alien races and cultures counter to our own. I should have never doubted.

Quasar

I’ve been reading Marvel’s cosmic titles in trade paperback form, so I’m not up to speed on everything War of Kings related just yet. So this teaser for Realm of Kings leaves me with a lot of questions I probably don’t want to know the answers to just yet, like when Wendall Vaughn got his body back and what happened to Phyla-Vel.

Ah, the agony of trade waiting …

… but we’re going to skip all that today. Captain America posts on Independence Day are kind of cliché, don’t you think? And since Captain America: Reborn #1 is just starting out what could very well be Act Three of the epic tale that is Brubaker’s Grand Design, well. The man isn’t done with it yet, so we can save the throwing of roses and the ticker tape parades for how awesome he is for when he’s done getting to the awesome parts at the end of his awesomeness (SPOILER: it’s gonna be awesome).

Let’s instead turn towards a story that’s coming to its own close and the war of Independence that no one may win after all.

When the Inhumans rose Atillan out of the surface of the moon at the conclusion of Secret Invasion, Queen Medusa made a very impassioned speech about the essential purpose of the Inhuman race and the final call to embrace it. It was a good speech and it was absolutely truthful; for the longest time, the Inhumans had been background filler for the Fantastic Four, special guest stars when a Marvel hero needed some cool looking backup dancers or valiant heroes of their own who just manage to make it out of danger to go back to their solitary little lives until someone else wants some exotic background characters for their stories. They’re either bounced from the toxic surface of the Earth or from the Blue Area of the Moon, a landscape so desolate it’s no wonder people rolled them over to get to Earth.

But, at heart, the Inhumans should have been able to crush their threats without a second thought. These people were specifically created as a rather ingenious and powerful personal army that would ascend the Kree into the dominant lifeform in the galaxy. The Inhumans have enough variety and creativity that they should have had their own book long ago and it took Abnett and Lanning to usher them into the role that was written for them: kick ass galactic army. Yeah, it was cool to have a pacifistic super race but look where that got them? So they drop the pretense of just wanting to get along and decide to stand up, fight and take their destiny to the stars, a freedom to do as they wish and that first wish goes to conquering the Kree.

Right back to where it started, Secret Invasion: War of Kings (or is it War of Kings: Secret Invasion? Does it matter?) had the Inhumans lift off and burn their way through space to nearly drop themselves right on the boots of Ronan the Accuser, a man who once challenged their right to self-govern, like Dorothy’s house on the Wicked Witch of the East. Medusa declared their intentions towards their former keepers, basically calling the ‘put up or shut up’ card: the Kree wanted a personal army of genetic supermen that would usher their race into a new evolutionary era? Well, brother, you got it, but not on your terms and not under your rule. Having barely made it out of Annihilation: Conquest with any sort of dignity intact, the Kree are without direction and without their Supreme Intelligence, a near-omniscient source that the Kree had followed for millions of years. Should this have happened a few years ago, pre-Annihilations, the Kree would have slapped the Inhumans around some then put them under their dominion. Nowadays, the Kree willingly give up their sovereignty with a couple words.

Sure, there’s been some civil unrest but the victories in battle and the compassion of Princess Diana Crystal pretty much put complaints to rest. The Inhumans had been a ‘free’ people before and all they had gotten for it was tragedy and a guest spot on the Fantastic Four. Preaching a very positive message of the greatest power being held in check and a desire to bring understanding to both Inhumans and humans hasn’t gotten them as far as kicking and explosions have. We the reader can look back at his juxtaposition from a distance and say ‘Ha ha, irony!’ as the culture the Kree once thought to enslave is now calling the shots. But, my friends, it doesn’t end there. If it did, we’d have a little abject lesson to chew on through the series and probably would find ourselves at the end of it having learned a little something as the galaxy rights itself again. It’s just not going to be that easy and if you’ve been reading the Marvel Space Odysseys, you’d have been ready for that from the start.

War of Kings #5 came out this Wednesday and added a whole new loophole to the idea of Inhuman ‘freedom’. In order to call a halt to this War of Kings (just like the title of the book!), the Inhumans have weaponized their Terrigen Mists and created a massive sonic-genetic bomb (shut up, it’s science) that would mutate people across worlds, therefore uniting the Shi’ar as Inhumans by force and did no one say this plan out loud to realize how crazy it sounds? Desperate times call for desperate measures, sure. The death of Lillandra Nermani pretty much promised us we weren’t going back to a tidy status quo and we were going to get some serious repercussions out of this, but a genetic reboot of the galaxy? Are the Inhumans so married to this new idea of freedom that they are willing to go against everything they had stood for previously to enslave another culture and bring another kicking and screaming into their fold? Did any of them read Earth X? The entire series and even before, Emperor Vulcan has been written as so villainous and crazy that he should be drawn less as a Caligula figure and more as a Snidely Whiplash. It could have been as simple as getting on the loudspeaker and calling his haircut silly to get him riled up enough to charge out to the field of battle himself. He enjoys watching his Empire dance before him like puppets but the man is unhinged; it’s not some great leap of logic that he could be coaxed out into a duel to the death for the whole bag of marbles but that isn’t the point of War of Kings. This is a fight for the Inhuman race’s right to fulfill their destiny, to be the galaxy’s finest warriors and to uplift the Kree race by any means necessary.

I’m sure Black Bolt regretted that he has but one life to give for his people, but such sacrifices weren’t necessary after all as by the end of issue #5, Emperor CrazyPants has torn through the T-Bomb Black Bolt had been planning to personally hurl down the Shi’ar’s throats. The final battle will come down to two Kings both with blood on their hands but only one for the right reasons.