The scale of the threat grows.
Creative Staff:
Story: Jonathan Hickman
Art: Steve Epting
What They Say:
Learn the history of the enigmatic Black Swan. What answers can she provide the Illuminati? And watch as the New Avengers do the unthinkable!
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
Sending the team off to a mission on an alternate world that was touching the last time around was one that worked really well for me as it presented an interesting idea, a look at a normal world with what seemed like nothing in the way of super powers on it, that also had to deal with what’s coming and how Galactus dealt with it to try and stave off the end of that universe. That it ended with a fight against his herald Terrax wasn’t a surprise, since it is still a superhero comic, but the context of events was really nicely done and having the members of the team gaining the greater understanding of the threat and the enormity of it all made for some good reading. Thankfully, this book doesn’t pick up where we were but rather a week later as they’re are still trying to determine their course.
That determination largely resides on Black Swan at this point as she holds a good deal of information about what’s going on and has shared very little overall, though enough for them to gain a bit more understanding on their own. Reed’s questioning of her has been an interesting aspect the last few issues as the play at jailer and prisoner, but it’s reached the point where this method offers little else to really gain from it all. With certain understandings in place about how she has to play the game, and the realization on Reed and T’Challa’s part that she’s certainly smarter in some ways than they guessed, the bulk of the issue turns into a pretty solid dialogue with all the main players together questioning her. Amusingly, she has little interest in talking with Strange at all, which delights Namor to no end, showing the rifts within the group in an easy enough way.
While we get a flashback look at the fight from before, and how the group spirited away Terrax as Galactus ate that world, the main flashback here has Black Swan revealing her view of the origins of the universe when she was known as Yabbat Ummon Tarru, who had access to a place called the Library of Worlds, which could only be entered by the Great Ladies, though her older brother the crown prince had the key to it with no ability to enter it. There’s some intriguing world building going on here that could be its own novel as we see how they went through this ritual until their world was ended due to the arrival of the Black Priests from their Earth to this one in order to save some of their people, but Black Swan escaped to the Great Library and ended up being greeted by the Great Ladies, which she became as a Black Swan herself. The expanded history that rolls out from here is interesting to be sure, with some decent questions peppered by Reed and Tony, but in the end there’s only so much that they can trust her since no stories of this have ever reached them before. She earns a bit of their trust of course, as events are starting up again, and an Incursion in Latveria certainly isn’t going to be easy to deal with. But with all that we get here, and knowing where things stand at the moment, tying this to other Secret Wars events certainly makes a lot of sense.
In Summary:
Jonathan Hickman is definitely solid at building and crafting larger stories and giving them weight, and I love that he spends his time going through the exposition aspect of it and exploring the back story so it feels weighted and real. When we get the flashback to the fight, it’s perfunctory and wordless as we get Steve Epting a chance to show some action, but it feels empty because it has no real meaning, a moment of fighting against the dying of the light. The world building going on here has so many expansions to explore to it that will likely never get touched upon that it’s unfortunate, but with what all of this does eventually lead to and the creativity it’s unleashing, it’s exciting to go back and read these for the first time with that bit of knowledge. Each installments adds another brick in the foundation that will make for this to be a very strong story overall.
Grade: B+
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: Marvel Comics via ComiXology
Release Date: April 24th, 2013
MSRP: $3.99
