Annihilators: Earthfall #3(of 4):
Summary: Having gotten past stage two of all super-hero team meetings(stage one: misunderstanding, stage two: fight), the Avengers and Annihilators have reached stage three, band together to face the real threat, in this case, the Magus. However, the Magus has complicated matters by taking possession of several Earth children, meaning if the teams want to rid themselves of the Magus, they'd have to kill children... Naturally, Captain America(and most of the Avengers and Annihilators) declares that's not even a consideration, while Ronan bluntly states that murdering the kids was the simplest solution. Better kill the Magus now before he reached his full power. While the Avengers and Annihilators try to come up with a solution that would work for both parties, the Universal Church of Truth's faith engine starts up and floods the United States with some sort of weird Magus energy, which further splits Magus's essence, possessing 30% of the US population, with that number continuing to grow. In other words, simply killing the children was out of the question since the Magus has further hidden himself throughout the US. To make matters worse, several UCT ships have flown to the Earth to collect all of the Magus fragments, so they could take the Magus out of the possessed people and resurrect their lord. While the majority of the Avengers and Annihilators head topside to fight off the staggering numbers of UTC warriors and black knights, Quasar, Iron Man, Gladiator and Ronan head to the UTC's faith engine to see if they could somehow reverse what the engine did, drawing the Magus's essence back into it. Quasar believes it's possible, but that the feedback could kill nearly all of the Magus possessed people. Before Iron Man, Quasar and Gladiator can decide what to do, Ronan announces that he'd assist with the attempt at reversing the faith engine, but that if they failed, he had ordered a platoon of Kree Sentries to the Earth to destroy the US if they failed. And no, I didn't read the Rocket Raccoon and Groot back-up story, so don't even ask.
Thoughts: I really, really enjoyed this issue. Sure, some of it has been series has been comic book writing 101(the Avengers and Annihilators early interactions) but the twist with the Magus splitting his essence further to stymie the heroes was very well done, as was the arrival of the Kree Sentries at the end of this issue. While nobody really wanted to come right out and say it, as distasteful as it may seem, Ronan's solution of destroying the US mainland to stop the UCT from recovering the Magus IS the best solution. Besides the strong story and good artwork, I also liked some of the interactions between certain characters, especially Ronan and Captain America, seeing as they were both soldiers, but saw different solutions to the problem at hand. I have to say, this mini-series has been building nicely, and the final issue should be explosive.
Score: 8 out of 10.
I love Cap and all, but Ronan was awesome in this issue!
again i didn't buy i just mostly flipped through it. it seemed like it wasn't bad. i think i've given the artist of this series more slack then most but this is the first time i heard anybody say this guy's art was "good". that's cool though i was feeling bad for this guy after the first Annihilators series the bitching from readers was almost as bad as with Harley's costume . . almost. thanks fir the review Nate.
ReplyDeleteoh shit i forgot to mention i found a copy of H4H #3 last week for only .50 cents. even with the whole Puppet Master thing i thought it wasn't bad. i especially like Iron Fist and Paladin getting into it. so finding #2 and #3 on the cheap was cool seeing as i picked up the series at #4.
ReplyDeleteby the way i did some fan art this weekend that included Nova. it's gonna be part of a slide show on Youtube that's in part for Bill Mantlo. that name ring a bell to you?
Eh, I'm not much of an art guy, hell, I'm lucky if I can draw a relatively good stick figure, but I didn't have any qualms with the art here. Granted, it would have to be truly terrible for me to notice, but to me the art was good.
ReplyDeleteDamn, man! You have all the luck with finding the best cheap comics! I have issue #1, and then #6-12, so I'd have loved to have found that issue on the cheap. I'd love to pick up the 4 issues I'm missing to fill out the run. Hm, the first thing that comes to mind when I see the name Bill Mantlo is "Incredible Hulk"... I don't know why, but that's the first thing to pop into my head.
he was hit by a car (hit n run)in 1995 while roller blading and has been laid up in the hospital ever since with permanent brain damage. he's not a vegetable or anything like that but he will never make a full recovery to how he was. aside from ROM, The Micronnauts, Jack of Hearts and Cloak n Dagger he wrote a ton of HULK issues during the 80's among other things. there is a Wiki page for him.
ReplyDeleteIs this mini going to tie in to the reason that there's that kid mohawk alien in Wolverine and the X-men or was that cleared up elsewhere?
ReplyDeleteDamn, that's horrible, Dave... I looked into it after reading your comment, and I can't believe they never caught the piece of shit responsible for hitting him... What a fucking scumbag. I have those Jack of Heart issues and the Cloak and Dagger stuff. I'm a pretty big Jack of Hearts fan too. I honestly didn't know what had happened to Mantlo... That's damn messed up.
ReplyDeleteNope, Anonymous. That kid didn't show up here(although it would make sense with Gladiator in this one), and I don't think he's gonna. I'd expect that to get cleared up in the Wolvie/X-Men book, since that kid was created by Jason Aaron and he has nothing to do with this mini. But if he does happen to pop up, I'll definitely mention it.