This Week’s Haul

This feels a lot like One Event Too Many for the spacebourne Marvel heroes: In just under two years of Nova we’ve had Annihilation Conquest, Secret Invasion and now War of Kings, only the first of which seemed really relevant to the character, who’s got a pretty heavy story arc of his own. Guardians of the Galaxy is now in their second event in less than a year. The occasional event can be diverting, but more-than-annual events make it very difficult to stay invested in the titles being disrupted by them. That’s pretty much why I don’t buy most books in the mainstream Marvel Universe these days – just the good stuff on the fringes that doesn’t get caught up in the cockamamie events.

All that said, is this event any good? Well, sort of. It’s hard to tell who the heroes are: The Starjammers are decidedly underpowered in this environment, and everyone else is of dubious moral fiber at best. Vulcan’s clearly the worst of them, so the anticipation of seeing Black Bolt rip him a new one seems rather tasty. On the other hand, if the series doesn’t deliver Vulcan his comeuppance – something which seems well overdue at this point – then I’d have to ask what the point in publishing it is.

I guess we’ll see. It’ll gain a lot more credit with me if it doesn’t disrupt the two ongoing series much.