War of Kings

Marvel’s other cosmic event has finally wrapped up (Ok I finally got out to buy comics) anyway it’s been quite a surprise, namely because its two run up titles (X-Men kingbreaker and Darkhawk) were a little lacklustre.

The story is of course about a second Kree/Shi-Ar war, only this time the Kree are lead by the Inhumans and their king Black Bolt, while the Shi-Ar are lead by Cyclops’s other other other brother, Vulcan. Also involved are the newly formed Nova Corps, the Guardians of the Galaxy and Darkhawk (or should I say Razor)

This was actually quite different to the Annihilation events, in that the tie ins told other aspects of the story leaving the main effectively a self contained story regarding the progress of the war as seen by Crystal from the Kree side and Gladiator from the Shi-Ar. The tie ins were of the good sort where they added to the story if you read Nova, Guardians of the Galaxy and Ascension, but didn’t detract from it if you didn’t, so Nova was really more about Rich’s battle with the out of control Worldmind/Ego and Guardians was half about their efforts to end the war diplomatically (With fun and disastrous results) and half about trying to avert the ultimate end to the war.

The end was spectacular, Black Bolt and Vulcan fight on a giant bomb, which eventually explodes tearing a huge hole in space, exactly as Adam warlock predicted. Warlock manages to stop its expansion but the cost is that he becomes his evil future self, The Magus, and at the cost of Phlya and Gamera, although I doubt they will stay dead.

We now have an interesting state of affairs to the cosmic marvel universe, namely there is an empire in chaos and a dirty great rip in space, Darkhawk is on the run as while under control of the Razor personality in his armour and the Nova Corps are back to severely reduced numbers (A nice touch is that all the new Novas are in trainee uniforms similar to rich’s old “Kid Nova” suit)

Overall it was good, well written with good art and really had the impression of a large scale galactic conflict. Tie ins were, as said before good but unintrusive and overall this was a good event, if lacking the “Galaxy is doomed” feel of the previous two, also a good example of how to run event tie-ins. Mainstream Marvel take note.

I had my fears about what spinoff we would get from this event; I feared it would be a Starjammers in the universal rule of no area of marvel must be without X-Men of some description, although Ch’od is brilliant. I’d have been happy with an Imperial Guard title or Inhumans, or a Darkhawk one. Instead we’re getting Realm of Kings.

Yes, from war of Kings comes Realm of kings, stuff is coming through the big space hole, and it looks like evil avengers. Fortunately we’re getting a couple of decent looking LS from it, Inhumans and Imperial guard. Not really happy about blundering into another event, but at least I don’t have another ongoing to pick up.