Annihilators

Picking up right after the end of “The Thanos Imperative,” the latest Cosmic Marvel story from writers Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning has the title team, made up of Quasar, Gladiator, Beta Ray Bill, the Silver Surfer and Ronan the Accuser, having their individual assess handed to them by Ikon of the Spaceknights.  It’s probably not the best start for what is supposed to be the most powerful team in the Marvel Universe and the writers don’t help matters by overselling Ikon’s arrogance.  That said, things get better from there as the team comes together to face the imminent threat of Doctor Dredd and the Dire Wraiths.  Artist Tan Eng Huat joins the team for this effort and shows that his slightly exaggerated style works very well with all of the action and alien characters he has to draw.

While I enjoyed the story overall, I can’t say that Abnett and Lanning’s attempt to tap into the nostalgia well that is “Rom Spaceknight” was an entirely successful one.  Thanks to a friend who is a huge fan of the series, I’ve actually read through all of it and thoroughly enjoyed it.  I’ll admit that early 80’s Marvel is by now an acquired taste, but if you can accept it/get past it the series is a great snapshot of the company and its characters at that point in time.  

Of course, another reason I liked it is that because Rom himself is a licensed character and not owned by Marvel, it means that when his series ended that was it for him.  Due to this, he’s probably the ONLY Marvel character whose story has a clear, definite beginning, middle and end.  It was a happy end too and thanks to the licensing issues surrounding the character, it’s not going to be undone anytime soon.  Still, that hasn’t stopped Marvel from messing around with the parts of the character’s mythos that they created and own.  That’s how we got “Annihilation:  Conquest,” and this.

I wouldn’t say that Abnett and Lanning’s treatment of the Spaceknights here is disrespectful by any means.  They actually do some interesting things with Rom’s wife Brandy Clark and the Dire Wraith Queen herself and the twists involving the Wraiths’ reappearance were very clever.  It’s just that seeing them here takes something away from that “happy ending” I mentioned earlier and it’s hard to get enthused about that.  Of course, if you’ve never read “Rom” then you will likely a) not care about these past three paragraphs and b) not understand the significance of these characters or why you should care about their fate.  If you’re invested in the ongoing fate of the Annihilators themselves, particularly Quasar’s overcoming of his self-doubt here, then that itself should be enough to get you through this.

(And now for something completely different!)

While “Annihilators” was a four-issue series, these issues were double-sized as Marvel decided to combine the previously-solicited “Rocket Raccoon and Groot” mini-series with this one.  Probably realizing that the niche spin-off of a niche of the Marvel Universe would’ve garnered abysmal sales by itself, they tacked it on here.  “Root and Branch, Tooth and Claw” is the complete tonal opposite of its companion story and all the more fun for it.

After the events of “The Thanos Imperative” and the dissolution of the Guardians of the Galaxy, Rocky finds himself without a team and a purpose and turns to a soul-deadening job in the mailroom of Timely Inc. to make ends meet.  That all comes to an end when someone sends him a clown assassin made out of sentient wood to kill him on the job one day.  Our hero survives and as the one place in the galaxy which has sentient wood is also the home to his friend Groot, he figures it’s time to pay him a visit.  Once there, he finds out that his buddy has fallen on even harsher times than he has.

The plot then goes on to include heavily-armed revolutionary woodland critters, an insane asylum staffed by talking animals, and the secret origin of Rocky himself.  It’s all very nutty and Timothy Green II’s art sells it and the inherent humor very well.  I’m not sure what the future holds for the character (both in terms of his current direction and publishing plans), but I can say that I’d like to see more of this kind of story when it happens.