Creative Staff:
Story: Charles Soule
Art: Ryan Stegman
What They Say:
Medusa and the Inhumans get a visitor to New Attilan – Thor! Who is Reader and is he friend or foe?
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
While the book wrapped up its opening salvo in the previous issue with the capture of Lash and bringing in the kids that he had taken under his wing in order to fight against Medusa and her side, there’s still plenty of aspects of it carrying over here – even if Lash isn’t to be seen yet. What we get here is seeing how Underage is fitting in while being kept under watch within the main facility since they’re unsure of his powers, but we also see how he and Dante later in the book swap stories of how Medusa and Lash talked about each other, making them both question what they’ve learned a bit. Dante is certainly more in line with Medusa’s way as he’s seen her do right by people – human and inhuman alike – but Underage is a bit more wary. What we do see with him is interesting though as Lineage hangs out with them and reveals that Underage’s parents weren’t really his parents, and he knows where they truly are.
This book largely works along two different paths beyond that, which is good to see. Both are interesting, though one is more of a tease that works similar to Lash in a way. As the Terrigen mist continues to move around the world, we’re introduced to a blind white man named Reader who has been following it. He’s now in northern China where the military has come to inspect all the citizens there that went through the mist to make sure nobody there is becoming powerful. Of course, there’s a young girl who has been impacted by it and had her abilities unlocked, but it turns horribly violent quickly, especially with the military involved. Reader is intriguing through as he’s able to freeze time for a short duration and save the young woman, Xiaoyi, and offer her a way of understanding more of herself and her power. It’s a similar track to both Lash and Medusa, but again, it’s someone being very proactive in going after those impacted by the mist.
The Attilan story gives us our guest star of the issue as Thor has come to visit as an envoy of the Avengers to see what Medusa is up to here. Medusa has certainly set up an interesting situation with the city that’s cropping up more around the main structures as she’s made it open for all to visit without a visa and has established some basic, local level trade. While there are gadgets that are a part of it, a lot of it involves food as that’s an easily cultural exchange. Thor generally likes what he sees, but he also has past experience with this as Asgard did it some time ago and that didn’t work out well. What’s really fun to see is that a trio of assassins have targeted Medusa while she’s walking with the streets with Thor, Dante and Eleja. They hold her responsible for the transformation they’ve been put through and are trying to make her pay for it and the loss of their families. Thor’s a little all over the map as Medusa deals with the situation in a calculated and kind of political way, but it’s one meant to defuse the situation and take the wind out of their sails while also making it clear that she’s the one truly and completely in control here. The contrast between her and Thor is nicely done but we also see how it’s impacting Dante as he just finds himself respecting her more and more.
In Summary:
This issue works another angle where we see various powers carefully approaching what Medusa is doing and expressing their concerns while letting her ease them and show how she intends to work with all of them. It’s similar to what Cap went through in the second issue, just from an Avengers standpoint here. I rather liked the Reader storyline, though it’s another mystery of sorts like Lash, and what we get from Medusa just cements how much one can like her and the way she handles what’s going on with the situation Attilan finds itself in now. This issue has a change in artist as Ryan Stegman has stepped in and he does a solid job here throughout, making it flow just as well as Joe Madureira did and keeping to the same kind of detail and striking nature of the backgrounds and poses. In fact, I really liked how some of what he did with Reader really made that come across in a kind of manga-like way as there’s hints of Akira Toriyama in some of these designs. A solid issue that further cements what’s going on while expanding and teasing more of where it can go.
Grade: B+
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: Marvel Comics
Release Date: August 27th, 2014
MSRP: $3.99
