Creative Staff:
Story: G. Willow Wilson
Art: Adrian Alphona
What They Say:
Kamala crosses paths with the Inhumans for the first time, by meeting the royal pup, Lockjaw! Every girl wants a puppy, but this one may be too much of a handful, even for a super hero with embiggening powers. He may be the Queen’s pooch, but this dog’s one royal pain in the neck.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
As the Inventor arc rolls on, I continue to find little to get enthused about it. The time with Wolverine didn’t do much to improve that either as the character simply doesn’t work well in it, though he provided a nudge in a different area to get things moving along well enough. With Wolverine having more than enough connections to a number of people around the world over the years, when you come across someone new, you do what you can to ensure that they’ll be alright. While Kamala is certainly handling things well enough, he sensed something more about her and that lead to Medusa at New Attilan doing a little something to keep track of one more of her kind.
That little something comes in the form of a very large Lockjaw that’s been sent to keep an eye on her and help her with things. While you can imagine a whole lot of people essentially freaking out at the sight of him when he comes barreling down the street, it’s great to see how Kamala gets so excited about his appearance and just treats him like a giant puppy. The whole “Can I keep him!?!” routine at home is spot on, with the additional weirdness of his size. Things do go a little easier than you’d expect considering the trouble that Kamala has been in with her parents, but these are the small things that you kind of ignore in order to get the story moving more. And really, who could say now to Lockjaw when you get down to it? Especially since there isn’t a lot of slobber-time.
What Lockjaw does bring to the picture is his general intelligence and ability to teleport, though he gets everything communicated in a couple of grunts and little more. With a few clues from the runaway that Logan managed to recover, it’s good to see Kamala using social media smarts to track down an idea of where the Inventor may be hiding out. And it helps that Lockjaw can just teleport her there as well. That leads to a decent bit of investigation, which in turn leads to action, which culminates in a discovery that the runaway kids that are being kidnapped are being used as the human batteries for the Inventor’s machines that are put together in patchwork form. There’s a kind of free for all in how the initial battle and discovery goes with it all, and how she handles the discovery, but it all keeps moving things forward. Especially as the Inventor now sees her as even more of a threat having survived the various encounters so far, which gets him to target her at school. Now there’s chaos.
In Summary:
Having been a bit behind on the series, I was looking forward to this issue as I always liked Lockjaw from my previous time with him years ago in other books from a time far, far away. What we get here with him is pretty much a fun time as he settles into living with her for the time being and being a pretty fun addition to her life. The reactions of everyone around her is about what you’d expect, but I love that she just totally adores him and doesn’t view him as anything weird. It’s completely in character for her. The book does a decent bit of movement in getting us a bit further with the Inventor storyline, but after eight issues of events I’m still not finding it all that interesting. The time with Kamala just learning the ropes and dealing with her struggles are what continues to draw me to the book.
Grade: B
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: Marvel Comics
Release Date: September 10th, 2014
MSRP: $2.99
