“Bad”
Creative Staff:
Story: Ron Marz
Art: Ron Lim, Don Ho
Colors: Romulo Fajardo Jr.
Letterer: VC’s Joe Sabino
What They Say:
THE SILVER SURFER VS. ADAM WARLOCK! Surfer has been framed for the apparent death of Genis-Vell! Can the Surfer survive long enough to clear his name to the Infinity Watch? And what actually happened to Genis?!
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
After the recent Ghost Light series for Silver Surfer, I was feeling the need for a bit more of this great character. While that title didn’t feature him as heavily as some others, it was an enjoyable enough romp that tied back to the very early days of Marvel’s modern era. But discovering that the glory days team of the 1990s Silver Surfer was doing a new limited series with writer Ron Marz, who crafted some great stories back during my heyday, had me on board with ease. Ron Lim’s talents never falter in my mind and while he retains a lot of the same style over the years it’s grown well in subtle ways and the strong color design from Fajardo helps accentuate it as does the way Don Ho inks his pencils. The combination is fantastic across the border and takes me back to a certain time and place while still being very much of today with what it’s doing.
With the second installment we get some more of the tried and true method of comic making and I’m mostly okay with it, though there’s a touch of “let’s get on with it” or “spend more time here with this” feeling. Genis-Vell’s time is interesting and I want more of it but in a different way as he basically has ended up in a very distant future where only the Silver Surfer is left and he’s silver-black and wielding Thor’s hammer as he’s the only one worth now. You get the sense that this is the bleak end of days with little else out there and the Surfer is just trying to kill Genis-Vell. That leads to Genis finally starting to push back after trying to talk down the situation but I wish it had opened with more dialogue just to get a handle on things and soak up the scale of it before getting into a fit. You can make some easy context clues to figure it out but a richer storytelling could make it feel more important than just another fight.
What’s exhausting is the fight that we saw start in the previous issue with the Surfer returning to Earth and being attacked by the Infinity Watch. We know it’s a classic impersonation issue and saw the results previously, but the need to just attack is tiring because even with the power assembled the Surfer isn’t going to go down easy with such a basic plan. Thankfully, they do get past that and we see how they find out Mephisto is involved thanks to Pip being possessed. Where I wish the book spent more time on is with the Surfer going to visit Thanos to request his help and we get some good stuff between the two as Thanos plays at philosopher-villain in a sense and calls out the obvious when it comes to the Surfer. More time just talking and engaging in some verbal sparring would have made the book a lot more interesting, both to read and visually, as we get a great bit of dialogue between the two here that lads to the all-too-quick suited-up Thanos to repay an owed favor.
In Summary:
While I continue to enjoy the artwork, especially the future sequence with Genis-Vell, I’m frustrated by the book otherwise because it’s falling into the cliches all too easily. I mean, it’s going to happen on some level because of how stories are told, but at the same time it feels like if it had more actually going into the structure of it that it wouldn’t feel so obvious and predictable. And that’s what’s hurting it. The interesting moments are mostly involving Thanos and the Surfer talking and what we get out of the future Surfer more so than the actual story being told. Too many simply setup pieces that contextually shouldn’t happen with such power players regardless of what’s actually going on.
Grade: C+
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: Marvel Comics
Release Date: October 11th, 2023
MSRP: $3.99
