It’s a whole new world.
Creative Staff:
Story: Robert Venditti
Art: Cafu
What They Say:
The ARMOR HUNTERS invasion has passed, leaving massive casualties and a fractured populace in its wake. Don’t miss the epilogue to Robert Venditti’s galaxy spanning epic, ARMOR HUNTERS, in the book that will set a new status quo for all of your favorite heroes! Find out here as X-O MANOWAR, UNITY, BLOODSHOT, THE HARBINGER RENEGADES and many more forge a new frontline of defense for the people of Earth!
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
The Armor Hunters series was a pretty decent read overall for the four issue main run that I read, as I didn’t spin off into any of the side miniseries with the various properties, and like any good, big event, there’s going to be an aftermath. Valiant does just that here as Robert Venditti returns to clean up from the events with Cafu coming along to provide the artwork, which works pretty well alongside what Doug Braithwaite did with the main series. That title was pretty fun overall as it exposed new readers to the various groups out there, but not all of them, and made it clear to the rest of the world in the Valiant universe that things are indeed going down out there. There’s only so long you can stick your head in the sand.
With Aftermath, Venditti gets right into it, though it’s all very much a kind of top level look at the fallout from the event. Exposing that the world has been dealing with aliens and that there are superpowered people among them, the majority of it deals with those groups rather than regular people. We do get a slice of regular people here, but not “real” regular people as it’s a sizable group that has come down to the Space Coast side of Florida in order to see what’s going on in the facility there. Things have been dead quiet in this area for years as space missions wound down, but now it’s overpacked with people that are keen on seeing what’s happening. It’s amusing to see the lifers complaining about all the newbies there, but it’s missing that other side that we need to see. Where are those that are afraid? Where are those that are angry and protesting? And where’s the reports of those that would have ended up taking their own lives in the face of something so world changing?
Within the MERO group, things are going through some significant changes there, though some of it is cosmetic. The first is that MERO is done and they’re now called GATE in order to be a little more accessible. Though that’s hard to believe since it stands for Global Agency for Threat, Excision. That’s not something folks will latch onto. Capshaw obviously has to go along with it, but it’s just another layer of idiocy when she’s more of a woman of action and getting things done, so she’ll just ignore it and move on to the real meat of the job. That’s getting all the ducks in a row for a proper introduction to the world, which means making sure Livewire is properly connected to handling GING-GR, who is attempting to learn emotion and personality while wanting to be a part of all of this as opposed to forced into what it did being drafted into the hunters. We also get a bit of a montage showing where all the hunters have ended up since things went south for them, and it’s a mixed bag of just how competently handled they are. Suffice to say, it won’t be a surprise to see any of them again.
It also provides an opportunity to check in with the others from Unity, such as Bloodshot, Ninjak and Gilad, as they’re all taking to GATE in different ways since it’s a much more public piece. Nobody really surprises here in that regard as their personalities are written all over them, but it’s handled well as a starting point. The book also deals with Aric and the changes he started to go through at the end of the Armor Hunters miniseries in that he’s looking at the whole world as the place he has to protect while moving away from the whole king of a certain peoples aspect. With his people so few now and the world at large at risk, it’s a natural thing and something that’s rather humbling for him considering the way he stood up to such immense powers over the years. It’s a good growth piece when you get down to it, but you can see how his tone is going to be the biggest problem for a bit.
In Summary:
The aftermath of the Armor Hunters saga is a place where things can definitely get interesting. It’s an opportunity to reshape things, to change allegiances, introduce new foes and alter the landscape in a solid way as the organization goes public and the various individuals involved decide how they want to participate. There’s some really solid bits in here to like with what it’s done, but also its goofy ones. And the time to take a look at the impact on the world at large with how humanity would react to all of it, especially with some cities having been taken down amid it. That’s given some token material to be sure, but it feels superficial as the real purpose is to get to the main characters and give them their story. I want to see their story against this backdrop though, which was the weak aspect for me. But as a whole, it’s on the right path and I’m curious to see what else will come into play.
Grade: B+
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: Valiant Comics
Release Date: October 1st, 2014
MSRP: $3.99