The original Jade Giant has fallen! What happens now?
Creative Staff:
Writer: Brian Michael Bendis
Art: David Marquez
Letters: VC’s Clayton Cowles
What They Say:
A New Inhuman named Ulysses, who seems to be able to predict the future, has divided the Super Hero Community. Iron Man believes that the future has to unfold, and that getting in its way is a road to even greater disaster-A position galvanized by the death of his best friend James Rhodes, A.K.A. War Machine. Captain Marvel believes that if she has a chance to avert catastrophe, she has no choice but to act- a position seemingly shared by She-Hulk, who encouraged Captain Marvel to fight back before falling into a coma. But When Ulysses shared a vision of The Hulk going on an apocalyptic rampage, Even Iron Man couldn’t ignore it. A massive group of heroes confronted Bruce Banner, putting him on a collision course with Hawkeye, who’d promised Bruce he’d kill him if he ever turned into the Hulk again. When the situation escalated, Hawkeye took the shot, killing Bruce before he could transform. He submitted to a murder trial, and the jury has reached an explosive verdict…
Content: (please be aware that content sections may contain spoilers)
With the last issue giving us a big surprise with the death of Bruce Banner. Here, we first find Carol Danvers approaching She-Hulk, who has just woken up from her coma. Unfortunately, she’s awoken to the news that her cousin, Bruce, is dead. The citizens of the country are rather pleased that Hawkeye is going free and that the Hulk is gone. We learn more of what went down in Hawkeye’s trial in the recent Civil War II: The Accused. Tony Stark is devastated and feels lost after recent events. He’s invited a group of heroes to speak with him, telling them his fears and his wonder at whether one can even see an unwritten future. Tony shows them his findings about Ulysses and his conclusion that the visions that the young Inhuman has been giving them are, in reality, guesswork. Tony also says that if Steve Rogers tells him to drop it (Cap is gathered with a few other heroes, like Beast, Carol Danvers, Dr. Strange, and Medusa (Queen of the Inhumans). Carol runs Tony’s data by Beast who reluctantly confirms that Tony’s not completely off.
On board the Triskelion, Carol, and S.H.I.E.L.D. are holding a woman for suspected terrorism based on a very flimsy vision, until Nightcrawler teleports the most likely innocent woman away. Carol instantly recognizes Tony is involved. Carol gets to the roof of the floating base to see Tony, Steve, and an assemblage of heroes. Tony fittingly spends little time with words, simply stating that they warned Carol. He insists that Carol stand down since he has more allies, but our ending shows us that Carol has a few unexpected allies: The Guardians of the Galaxy (among whom are Venom and The Thing)! It looks like an actual battle is about to begin as we end our issue here.
In Summary:
The fighting looks like it’s finally going to begin! This was, honestly, an aftermath issue. What I mean by that is that it’s mostly Tony and some other heroes trying to move forward after last issue’s events. Tony has started compiling information to make his side’s case, and honestly, it’s very easy to see where he’s coming from. In Carol’s rush to follow the visions and prevent problems before they happen, she continually justifies and finds ways to rationalize the awful things that follows these run-ins. The was nowhere more obvious than her reactions to Banner’s death. Sure, she was sad and angry in the moment it happened, but now, she’s perfectly capable of rationalizing and defending what Hawkeye did, saying he prevented possible deaths. This issue shows her following that trend of rationalizing, even kidnapping an innocent woman because the visions said she may be a Hydra agent. When all the evidence disagrees, she clearly fails to give up and insists they keep looking.
Her fanaticism about this idea of preventing things before they happen is, it would seem to me, shutting her critical thinking skills off. Would Banner be dead if she hadn’t led tons of people to confront him? He may not have gotten as agitated. Tony is speaking from logic, but he’s bogged in grief as well. He would know better than to lead an overt attack on the Triskelion like he does. Aside from some questionable actions for heroes, the issue here is that this installment of the main storyline is just like the others. There’s a lot of talk, rationalization, and anger. There’s questionable things done and we still haven’t gotten to the actual “War” part, though we seem very close now. The art remains the same as the other issues, where it’s good, but not what I would call exceptional. The best thing in the issue is that you really can feel the emotion from Tony and Carol. They’re the best-written characters in the issue. This issue does leave the question of what She-Hulk is thinking now. She obviously wasn’t too happy with the news of Bruce’s death at Hawkeye’s hands, but we never get to see her reaction in full.
This issue, for me, continues the odd decline Marvel has been on for a while now. They use anger inducing deaths, make characters do out of character actions, and replace characters with no cause. Hulk is the latest casualty in this, and I’d love to know why he needed to die. This was a so-so issue really. not good really, but not bad either. The story is going, but slower than it might be. It sounds odd that I’d want to hurry heroes fighting each other, but if you are going to advertise that, then actually give us that. In the end, this will not draw you in if you aren’t invested already, and it might still annoy you for simply being more exposition really. It falls in the middle between good and bad, so there are some things that do work well here.
Grade: C-
Age Rating: Teen
Released By: Marvel Comics
Release Date: July 27th, 2016
MSRP: $5.99
