Broken Frontier

The end is near. Gah Lak Tus is arriving shortly. And it doesn’t look like Armageddon will be fun at all.

There’s no stopping it now. The greatest scientific minds have gone over the information from the herald android Vision and the Kree battleship that was waiting in orbit. And between Sam Wilson, Mahr Vehl, and the Fantastic Four’s Reed Richards and Sue Storm, all they could figure out is exactly how painful it would be for the world devourer to feast on the planet. But before we learn what they have planned as a response, a few other characters get ultimatized, because you can’t have the coming of Gah Lak Tus without a certain beloved herald leading the way.

Warren Ellis surely has taken his time with this trilogy. At least he makes it pay off. Whereas Ultimate Nightmare was slow and mysterious, and Ultimate Secret was a large scale action movie, this one looks like it’ll actually be a combination of the two. In this first issue we get some interesting scientific discussion of the coming Armageddon from Reed Richards, a funny aside between Sue Storm and Carol Danvers, and a chase scene down the stairs of an apartment complex. The dialogue is vintage Ellis, and he proves that he still knows how these characters should talk. Aside from the odd switch of plotlines in the middle of the story, the pacing is excellent. And while I must bemoan the ultimitization of two more characters where only one was necessary, they are both fairly well done.

With a series written like this one, it takes a pretty impressive artist to match it. Luckily, Brandon Peterson is up to the task. His early scenes at the Triskelion set the scene almost perfectly. Dark and ominous, you can feel the mood dropping in the room while they discuss the effects of Gah Lak Tus. Similarly, his action scene is fast paced and clear. Peterson utilizes the wide screen movie look that has become the hallmark of Warren Ellis miniseries. The only issue I have is that they’re going to have to change the name of a certain herald as he is sorely lacking that for which he is named. But even in that, the artwork looks spectacular.

It remains to be seen if this trilogy will live up to its predecessor. Thus far it has run hot and cold (in both artwork and writing), but the payoffs have been enough to keep me excited and reading along. I guess the only wish is that this series actually publishes on time.