| Comic Review | Paul Milligan |
Annihilation Prologue #1
Writer: Keith Giffen
Art: Scott Kolins & Ariel Olivetti
Colorist: June Chung
Letters: Cory Petit
A
new threat to the galaxy has emerged through a tear in
space, wiping out everything in its path. All across the
galaxy the effects of the attack are felt. The Nova Corps is
rallied to halt its deadly advance but can even they stand
against an enemy that is wiping out the Skrull and Kree
alike, which makes the Silver Surfer and even the deadly
Thanos take notice?
The Annihilation Prologue kicks off Marvel’s latest big
event, which plans to reintroduce and reinvigorate their
cosmic characters like Nova, Thanos, Silver Surfer, Ronan
and the Super-Skrull. This issue moves fast. So fast at
first that it almost feels like I missed something
somewhere. It almost seemed as if there was a prologue to
the prologue that I hadn’t seen. A few pages in and I was
almost certain I was going to hate this book. The dialogue
alone was giving me a headache. But halfway through the
book, despite its faults, I found myself enjoying the story.
It’s big, it’s epic and it’s tragic… exactly what a space
opera should be. The battle between the Nova Corps and the
mysterious alien armada was spectacular and the aftermath
was devastating. Plus, Nova is one of my all-time favorite
characters, so it’s kind of hard to pass up any story he’s
involved in.
Now, as intrigued and excited as I was by the end of this
issue, I still had some major problems with this issue. For
one thing it almost seems like the book takes for granted
that the reader knows who the hell all these characters are,
what the politics are like and who all these various races
and groups of people are. With something so big and
sprawling I think it would have served the story better to
give some background on some of these things before flinging
the reader headlong into a vast and complex story. I
consider myself pretty knowledgeable when it comes to comics
and even I found myself a little lost and turned around by
this book. On the plus side, there is a database in the back
of the book that gives some background information on some
of the characters and groups. It would have been nice to see
some of that stuff before the story started rather than
reading after, but at least it’s there.
From here the story will spin off into four separate
mini-series starring Nova, Ronan, Silver Surfer and the
Super-Skrull and while Nova plays a huge role in this issue
the other characters seem a little shoehorned in, just to
get them some face-time before their mini’s start. Hell, I
just had to guess that part of the story was about the
Super-Skrull as they never really came out and said it was
him. Come on… all those Skrull look alike to me. I was
especially confused by Drax the Destroyer’s appearance since
it seemed to assume that you’d read the recent Drax mini-series and knew who the hell the character was.
So for me, Annihilation is off to a bit of a rocky start,
but I’m a hell of a lot more interested than I thought I’d
be. I’m definitely planning to pick up the Nova mini-series
that spins out of this one-shot. But now I’m leaning toward
trying the rest of the minis as well. I’ll at least give the
actual Annihilation mini-series a try once it ships, which
will happen once all of the tie-in mini-series wrap up. It
seems a bit of a stretch to ask readers to invest in so many
books starring characters that haven’t starred in or been
able to sell a series in years. But who knows? They hooked
me.
Special thanks go out to Jeremy Shorr, owner of
Titan Comics for allowing us to use his advance
preview books for review purposes.
