Broken Frontier

After successes and failures that span the galaxies, a band of cosmic warriors come together to save creation, united in a war against he who would annihilate all.

In destruction there is always change. The annihilation wave wrought by Annihilus, ruler of the Negative Zone, has changed much, and many heroes, even some who were once villains, have stepped up to stop him. Some have fallen, and some have limped away, but some have dug deep, found something they didn’t think they had, and have been made better and stronger for it. Among these few stands the man called Nova, now the supreme commander of a rag-tag army set against Annihilus’ legions. Nova’s army fights hard and loses much. But though they bend, they do not break, and the end of yet another grand battle finds them victorious. But only for a while, as much, much more is in store for them. They do not know that Thanos is in league with Annihilus, and the two make as formidable a duo as can be imagined. But after capturing Extirpia, one of Annihilus’ queens, Nova and his allies learn that Aegus, She of All Sorrows, and Tenebrous of the Darkness, two beings as old as the universe itself, have been freed to unleash a vengeance never seen before upon their captor—the eater of worlds, Galactus. And they have a really good shot at kicking his ass.

Marvel’s cosmic characters hold a special place for me, as Jim Starlin’s Captain Marvel and Warlord stories were some of the first comics I ever read. I hardly understood them at the time, but they made an impression that’s just as indelible now as when I was twelve. The epic space battles. The idea that one man could wipe out a planet, or even the universe. The swagger and élan, sometimes mixed with either real conscience or real megalomania. And cosmic ideas that I would only find again many years later when reading the likes of Heinlein and Philip K. Dick. But most of all there was the sheer size of these narratives and the sense that they took place on a stage the size of a galaxy.

Unfortunately, this end of the Marvel Universe hasn’t been well-served of late. Witness the most recent Captain Marvel, Warlock, Thanos, and Silver Surfer series. To varying extents, they all have been chumped, brought down to Earth in ways that have stripped away much of what made then enduring, compelling characters. The Annihilation event has corrected this somewhat, by placing some of my favorite cosmic characters on the stage they deserve, but much of it has also been underwhelming, primarily because much of what should be grand space opera reads and looks more like pulp sci-fi. And so I began Annihilation #1 with mid-range and perhaps lowered expectations. I’m glad to say, however, that on several levels it taps into what Marvel cosmic stories have been and should be.

After a lack-luster writing job on the Silver Surfer mini-series, in Annihilation Keith Giffen has his finger on the pulse of his characters and shows no sign of letting up. Richard Rider, a.k.a. Nova, has gone through much and has come out a changed man, changed enough in a good way (no more Spidey-like quips) that we believe that he can lead the show. His development and new-found maturity is naturally portrayed by Giffen and is an intriguing next step in his arc as a character. For other characters, such as Ronan the Accuser, Drax the Destroyer, black-ops specialist Gamorra, and Galactus’ former herald Firelord, Giffen’s writing gets at what makes these characters great in the first place—they’re bad-asses who know it and know how to use their bad asses, axes, death rays, and raging super strength. Such earnest but brawny characterization really pulls this story together. But more importantly, it builds and develops something that each of the minis lacked—a sense of operatic size. Not just the sheer geographical space of the battlefield, or the explosions and death rays, but the sense on every page and in every panel that the characters (even Galactus) are going beyond themselves and fighting for something that matters, something they could very easily lose. On the other side of the battle, Annihilus and Thanos make a great pair, and the level of intrigue between them as both their egos try to fit in the same room amps up the dramatic tension. Giffen also crafts a stunning cliffhanger that rocks our expectations of how much could actually hit the fan in the next five issues.

For the most part, I’ve also been disappointed by the artwork in the previous Annihilation minis. Most of it would have been perfectly apropos for pulp sci-fi, but none of it had any of the grandeur one would expect for stories of this size and scale. Thankfully, Andrea Divito’s artwork comes much closer to fitting the bill. His work isn’t flashy or even overtly stylish, but it is dynamic and vibrant. He impressively fills panels to the brim without confusing or fatiguing the eye or losing track of the narrative’s flow. To the contrary, he does a great job of drawing us in, using lots of close and tight medium shots to put us in the front row of this extravaganza of death. So much so, to his credit, that while he’s depicting an epic battle far from Earth, he makes it feel like the fields of Verdun or the Somme during the first war to end all wars.

The strength of this issue dwarfs the four separate mini-series that came before it. Anyone who missed them didn’t miss much, but fans of cosmic heroes who skip Annihilation just might miss out on one Marvel’s best space-based stories in years.