Attilan Rising Podcast

It’s the beginning of a brand new storyline in the pages of Ms. Marvel as illustrator, Marco Falla, joins G. Willow Wilson and Ian Herring for the start of an arc interestingly entitled ‘mecca.’

The tale begins with Kamala and her family preparing for their annual celebration of the first day of Eid Al-Adha.  Herein it’s shown that Aamir’s new bride, Tyesha is pregnant, meaning Kamala is to be an auntie in the not too distant future.  How exciting!

Yet the merriment is cut short when they return home to see their street partially cordoned off by barriers and signs reading ‘bring back the real Jersey City.’  It’s not clear what exactly is going on, but it certainly looks like trouble… it would seem that a tide of divisiveness has swept over the city.

The Khan family try not to let it all spoil their good time and continue on with their celebration.  Eid Al-Adha is the Festival of the Sacrifice and is a major holiday celebrated by Muslims all over the world.  The family prepare a huge feast for friends and family.  Kamala enjoys herself but cannot help but dwell on those disturbing signs and what exactly is going on with Jersey City.  Wanting to investigate the matter further, Kamala excuses herself saying she wants to take a walk after having eaten so much.  Her step-brother, Gabe, opts to go with her.
While on their walk, Kamala and Gabe are approached by two suspicious looking customers in matching uniforms who introduce themselves as agents of the ‘Keepers of Integration Normalization and Defense’ agency or KIND for short.  These KIND agents are patrolling the neighborhood to enforce behavioral norms.

The whole idea of it strikes Kamala as absurd and unconstitutional.  She states that Mayor Marchesi would never sanction such a thing.  The KIND agents inform her that Machesi has been unseated as mayor, fired by the city council in a closed session and replaced by Chuck Worthy.

Worthy is a Hydra agent and former underling of Dr. Faustus who had run for Mayor several issues back.  The KIND agents refute this idea that mayor Worthy is associated with Hydra, stating that the whole notion is merely a smear campaign orchestrated by his political enemies.

These agents add that they had been called to the neighborhood by citizens who had reported undocumented super-powered beings.  It all cuts Kamala like a knife.  The idea that her own neighbors would turn on her in this fashion is just crushing.

Kamala has seen this particular brand of authoritarianism before and feels confident she knows exactly who is behind it all.  She barges off intent on meeting the threat head on.

Having donned her Ms. Marvel outfit, Kamala arrives at the old detention facility that had once been run by the Carol Cadets back during the second superhero civil war.  Here she encounters ‘Basic’ Becky St. Jude.   Becky (who is now going by the name ‘Lockdown’) explains that she is no longer an outlaw, now she is the law.

She works for Mayor Worthy and has every legal right to enforce her authoritarian ways.  Indeed the tables have turned and now it is Ms. Marvel who is the one operating outside the law.  Lockdown has her minion, a villain named ‘Discord,’ attack Kamala.

This Discord appears to have some sort of electrical offensive powers, firing blast of energy at Ms. Marvel.  Kamala has been practicing her defensive dodges, utilizing her stretching powers to shift away from an attack in an efficient fashion.  At first she is quite excited that her practice has paid off and she is able to evade Discord’s attack with relative ease.

Yet Discord seems familiar with the particular limits of Ms. Marvel’s abilities; he changes up tactics and ensnares her with rings of electrical energy.   Such high voltage burst of energy is something Ms. Marvel is vulnerable to; and Discord is able to defeat her.

It seems as though the mysterious Discord fellow is someone Kamala has encountered before.  Trapped in those energy rings, she asks him who he is.  He replies that perhaps he’ll answer the question but first he has a question of his own… and asks about the time in which Ms. Marvel fought against Chuck Worthy’s downtown development plan.  Discord asks Kamala what she saw when she first arrived on the scene?  It takes her a minute, but then it dawns on her that despite the clearly evil intensions of Worthy’s plan, there were indeed quite a few people there supporting him.  At the time, she just shrugged them off as easily manipulated stooges, but now she’s forced to realize that they were real people, people with real feelings and real concerns.

Worthy was offering totalitarianism in exchange to keeping them safe.  Ms. Marvel fight against it because, to her, such a bargain is evil and unAmerican.  Yet it nerve quite dawned on her that there were a lot of people who felt the opposite, who very much wanted what Worthy was offering… and she disregarded them merely because she believed she was right, that she knew better.
And then Discord knocks her out.

Meanwhile, Gabe rushes back home and alerts the others that there are these creepy KIND agents out there enforcing social norms and rounding up super powered beings.  Zoe has been the Khan’s guest for the Eid Al-Adha festivities.  She interrupts Gabe, expressing a fearful dismay that government agents are out there rounding up illegal immigrants!   Embarrassed by her outburst, Zoe explains that she was actually born in France and has never actually gone about naturalizing her citizenship.

Aamir brushes off Gabe’s concern.  The family are all law abiding citizens and should have nothing to fear.  Mrs. Khan asks Aamir to bring the leftovers of their feast to a family down the street.  He complies, but on his way there is accounted by the KIND agents.  These agents identify Aamir as being an undocumented super-powered being.  Amir laughs it off.  He had only possessed powers for a short while, the results of an accident that have long since worn off.  The agents are unmoved by his explanation and haul him off to be processed, detained and who knows what else.  And it is with this harrowing turn of events that the issue ends with he promise of continuation in the next installment.

Anyone expecting a lighter toned story-arc following the rather heavy DocX saga is sure to be surprised.  Wilson’s scripts just do not shy away from the important topics of the day, and ‘Mecca’ may very well be Ms. Marvel’s most pressing and germane tale to date.

The gag where Zoe assumes the KIND agents are out rounding up undocumented immigrants made for funny bit, but also acted to underscore the metaphorical valance of the issue.  ‘Super powered beings’ in the issue is rather clearly just a stand-in for immigrants, specifically immigrants who are Muslim.

The trump Administration’s so-called ‘travel ban’ has just recently been once more struck down by the ninth circuit court of appeals.  It’s now being fast-tracked to the Supreme Court.  This travel band is very much a poorly veiled Muslim ban and is as unconstitutional as it gets; yet there is still a chance that the Supreme Court will uphold presidential authority over immigration and allow the ban to go into effect.  A daunting, horrifying prospect.
The constitutionality and amorality of such a ban notwithstanding, there is the simple truth that there is a sizable portion of the American public who would very much like to see it enacted.  The specter of terrorism has created an irrational fear toward people who are Muslim.  And many are quite will to give up civil liberties to take actions that they believe will better ensure their safety.  I don’t agree with them, but it is folly to just see them as an uninformed rabble.  They are real people with real feelings.

Kamala is used to being loved.  She’s plucky and cheerful and wonderfully inspiring in her unwavering idealism.  It is surprising and terribly dismaying for her to realize that there are many people out there who fear her, who would feel much safer were she gone.  And this extends to the real world as well.  Ms. Marvel bursted onto the scene and was an immediate hit.  She was celebrated as the first major Muslim superhero and that, coupled with the amazingly high quality of her comic, made her an absolute darling of the progressive left.  Yet times have changed and the shift in political atmosphere in the states has very much emboldened people who have attitudes to the contrary to speak their minds.  And as one of the more visible Muslim characters of popular culture, Ms. Marvel (and her creators) has become the focus of a great deal of vicious and intolerant animus.

Some may feel that it is inappropriate for G. Willow Wilson to incorporate all of this into once of her comics.  Who may think it better to keep comic books apolitical and just a man of escapism.  Yet I don’t blame her in the least.  How can she not think about things, not want to try to process and digest it all in her art?  Life and art always imitate one another, there’s really no way around it.

I’m curious about the story-arc being entitled ‘Mecca.’  Mecca with a capital ‘M’ is the capital of Hejaz, Saudi Arabia, the birthplace of The Prophet Muhammad and spiritual center of Islam.  Mecca with a lower case ‘M’ however can colloquially by used as any place in which a person very much wants to go, an idealized location.  The font utilized write out ‘Mecca’ at the beginning of the issue makes it impossible to tell if it is being written with an upper or lower case ‘M.’  It makes for a very intriguing ambiguity…

Recommended.  Four out of Five Lockjaws.

It’s the third pulse pounding installment of the Secret Warriors; from the creative team of Mathew Rosenberg, Javier Garrón and Israel Silva.

The Secret Warriors, a randomly collected team of Inhumans fleeing the forces of Hydra in the midst of the Secret Empire event, had been heading West, hoping to reach the Mutant nation of Tian.  Karnak believes a mysterious Inhuman is living among the Mutants who may prove essential if the Warriors are to have any hope of defeating Hydra.

Crossing over onto the sovereign soil of Tian, the Warriors are immediately stopped by an impressive group of Mutants and former X-Men.  This includes The Beast, the older Hank McCoy, who at one point had been a close ally of The inhumans of New Attilan.

The Mutants are not looking for a fight, yet they will not allow these Inhuman to cross further into Tian; it is their home, their nation, and allowing these wanted felons in could upset their tenuous treaty of non-conflict with Hydra.

The Inhuman Karnak has the team searching for is named ‘Leer.’  It is not someone the mutants are familiar with and they are unwilling to give the Warriors permission to venture further into Tian to search for this individual.

Meanwhile, there is a good deal of passive-aggressive and aggressive-aggressive banter between the two teams.  After all that had happened with the Terrigen Cloud and the subsequent war between the inhumans and Mutants, The Mutants have little in terms of sympathy for the dire situation that the Inhuman peoples are in.  Ms. Marvel (normally more even-headed and the last person one would suspect to start a hero on hero fight) has had enough and slams a giant hand forward that slams the mutant (and former X-Force and NextWave member) Boom Boom to the ground.

Before a full fledged battle can go down, a earthquake-like tremor causes a large fissure to crack open in the ground, separating the two teams.  At first Inferno assumes it was Daisy who did this, but it was actually Rictor, a Mutant (and former member of X-Force and The Fallen Angels) who has powers similar to those of Quake.

The Warriors agree to leave and are escorted out of Tian by the Mutant’s specialized Blackbird jet.  Yet it turns out to be a feint and Daisy fires a seismic blast that crashes the jet allowing the Warriors to escape and trek further into Tian.

Somehow, Karnak knows exactly where to go and leads the team to an underground laboratory hidden away near the border.  There they find The Dark Beast, an alternate reality version of Hank McCoy who is quite evil.  The Dark Beast has been utilizing all of the chaos brought about by the Secret Empire to continue his experiments, dissecting both Mutant and Inhuman subjects alike.

The Warriors capture him and Karnak and Quake take him into an adjacent chamber to interrogate/torture him.  Ms. Marvel is absolutely dismayed that her teammates would stoop to such measures and she tries to stop it.  Daisy argues that these are desperate times requiring desperate measures; and if she cannot stomach it then she should quit.

Whatever terrible things Quake and Karnak have done to The Dark Beast it is enough to get him to talk and they learn that this mysterious Leer had been in Tian, but has since been captured and taken away by Hydra.

Before the team has time to process this disappointing knows, they are sieged by a large group of Mutants (those who they had encountered earlier plus reinforcements).  The Beast (the real one) was not aware that his Dark self had this lab, nor the diabolical experiments he had been conducting.  The Mutants are somewhat grateful that The Warriors had found the matter out; and foe this they are willing to let the Warriors leave in peace.

Leaving Tian, the Warriors are without a plan and are as far away from being a cohesive team as ever.   Ms. Marvel is still beside herself with anger and disappointment over Quake and Karnak’s conduct (this is just not what heroes do).  Daisy has no patients for Ms. Marvel’s idealism and suggests she leave the team and return to Jersey.  Before the conversation can go any further, their car is hit with rocket fire and overturned.  The Warriors crawl out from the wreckage and find themselves face to face with a legion of Hydra soldiers.  The Hydra force is led by Daisy’s father, the villainous Mr. Hyde.

‘Daughter,’ he states, addressing Daisy, ‘it is time we talked.’  And it is with this perilous cliffhanger that the issue comes to an end.

Each issue thus far has presented a series of interludes focusing on one of the team members.  the first issue focused on Daisy, the second on Inferno and this issue focusing on Ms. Marvel.  It shows Kamala during the early moments of Hydra’s take over.  She looks on in horror as the entire island of Manhattan is encased in an impenetrable dome of DarkForce energy.  Hydra troops them march into Jersey City and Ms. Marvel is primed to jump into the fray and get to work super-heroing.

Using her old Avengers com-link, Ms. Marvel contacts Iron Man.  Iron Man basically tells her that the best she can do is lay low; she’s just a kid and what is occurring is a threat that is far too much for her.  Ms. Marvel doesn’t take this advice and patrols Jersey City trying to figure out what she can do to help.  There are far too many Hydra soldiers, far too heavily armed for her to take on her own and she’s forced to keep to the shadows.  She does intercede when she sees a pair of resistance fighters preparing bomb to blow up a Hydra transport vehicle.  She stops them, convincing them that going through with it would put too many innocent lives at risk.  They are discovered by Hydra soldiers and have to flee.  One of the would-be saboteurs is captured.

Later, back at the Khan household, a group Hydra soldiers knocks on the door and asks Kamala’s father if they have seen a specific young man.  He’s a boy Mr. Khan knows as a neighbor and it turns out he was one of the youths who had tried to blow up that Hydra transport.  Mr. Khan gives up no information, yet Kamala overhears the conversation and feels responsible for the kid who’d got caught as well as his coconspirator who is now being sought out.

Donning her Ms Marvel gear, Kamala ventures out again, hoping she can do something to makes things right.  It turns out that the young man Hydra had captured broke under interrogation and gave up not only the name of his colleague, but also the location of a resistance safe-house.  Inferno had been hiding out in this safe-house and this is how he had been captured.

Kamala can only look on from a distance and feel terribly guilty, as though this is all somehow her fault.  Presumedly, Kamala’s feelings of guilt over the matter is what ends up motivating her to aide Daisy when she calls for her assistance (as shown in the first issue).

This third issues doesn’t have the exact same pizzaz as the second, but is still a fun read with lots of stand out moments and some very funny dialogue.  On the surface, the tension is all about the uneasy feelings between the Warriors and the Mutants, but the undercurrent is more so the stark philosophical differences between Daisy and Kamala.

For Kamala, being a hero is about being good… always doing the right thing even when times are at their toughest.  For Daisy, however, being a hero is about getting the job done by any means necessary.  Daisy’s willingness to venture into a moral gray zone to accomplish her goals completely defies Kamala’s sensibilities… for her, there is no sense to fighting Hydra if they are going to be just as bad as Hydra is.   The Dark Beast’s actions are detestable, yet aren’t they just as detestable for having tortured him for information?

Daisy has no time for Kamala’s black and white idealism; this is war and there can be no winning a war without getting one’s hands dirty.   As far as Daisy is concerned, Kamala is essentially a liability to the team unless she can get her act together and start seeing this situation for what it truly is.

Personally, I think Daisy is correct here.  The story entails the country being taken over by a nazi force; fighting back and doing so with he utmost of savagery is needed… it is the only choice.  And yet I can still see Kamala’s point.  There is no way of fighting this fight without sacrificing one’s own morals and principles.  It’s no easy process, nor is it something that can be truly justified or rationalized away.  The whole idea of a ‘just war’ is merely a cognitive trick that allows one to temporarily shelve their morals.  As Saint Augustine of Hippo phrased it in Contra Faustum Manichaeum:

“They who have waged war in obedience to the divine command, or in conformity with His laws, have represented in their persons the public justice or the wisdom of government, and in this capacity have put to death wicked men; such persons have by no means violated the commandment, “Thou shalt not kill”

It’s a well-phrased and convincing argument, but is nonetheless little more than an eloquent form of cognitive dissonance.  Sometimes violence is necessary, there can be no way around it.  Yet morality will always be the first casualty and one needs to respect this and mourn for it respectively.
In either case, it is neat to see Daisy and Kamala as representatives of these dueling ideologies.

With IvX still so close in the rearview mirror, I wasn’t especially keen on seeing Inhumans and Mutants fighting, nor having the whole matter of who was right and who was wrong re-litigated on the page.  And for this reason, I appreciate that Rosenberg’s script kept the conflict to a minimum.

It is difficult to bend my mind around the idea that The Mutants would stand idly by and allow what is happening in Secret Empire without getting involved.  They have been given the nation of Tian as concession, an offering that they accepted in exchange for staying out of Steve Rogers’ way as Hydra took over the rest of the country.  The whole idea of it seems absolutely antithetical to who The Mutnats, who The X-Men, are.  Perhaps their acceptance of this offer was influenced by the Cosmic Cube.  As it stands, these Mutants acting so out of character ended up making them seem a bit wooden in the story.

Javier Garrón and Israel Silva’s art is once more top notch.  The action is fluid and dynamic and even the more just standing around talking scenes have an energy to them thanks to Garrón’s terrific ability to relay emotion through facial expression.

Silva’s color pallet matches the town of the story quite well; this was especially evident int he transition from the lush earth tones of the forest to the cold and sterile atmosphere of The Dark Beast’s lab.

a few notes:

• I recall reading that the Dark Beast had died in one of the final story arcs of Brian Micheal Bendis’ run on Uncanny X-Men.
• I am all about Rictor’s awesome porn-mustache; and love that Shatterstar appears to also grown a similar ‘stache.
• Is The Vision, Scarlet Witch and Deadpool now members of Hydra?  How did this happen?
• Stan Lee once stipulated that he never wanted to see Reed Richards of The Fantastic Four use his stretching powers to extend his neck, suggesting that it was an unnerving visual and kind of took away from Richards’ sense of integrity.  I can see where Lee was coming from in this regard.  I didn’t much care for seeing Kamala stretch her neck in this fashion and would have rather that she stretch from the torso.  Still, a minor nitpick.
• Lunella telling Magik that she’s acting like a super hero cliche was my favorite line.
• Rictor joking that Daisy’s powers are unoriginal was my second favorite.
• Who the heck is Leer?

All and all another great issue and definitely recommended.  Three and a half out of Five Lockjaws.

Spinning out of the Secret Empire cross over event, Mathew Rosenberg, Javier Garrón and Israel Silva bring us the debut issue of the all new Secret Warriors.

A sentient version of the reality-bending Cosmic Cube has altered the fabric of reality, changing history so that Captain America has been transformed and has secretly been an agent of Hydra, quietly biding his time and putting into place a grand scheme to seat Hydra as the rulers of the United States and soon the world.  The plot has been initiated and the world’s heroes were caught by surprise as the greatest among them has been revealed as a traitor and the most dire of threats.
Rogers and his Hydra forces have sprung their trap, encasing much of Manhattan in an impenetrable orb of Darkforce energy while using Alpha Flight’s earthly shield to strand many of the world’s more powerful heroes in outer space.  Shield has been compromised, the majority of its agents having been brainwashed into following Hydra’s command; and there are plenty of angry young men and women willing to join Hydra’s new world order.  Things are pretty bad.

The issues narrative jumps back and forth between periods of time before and after Hydra’s sinister take-over.  The central focus is on Daisy ‘Quake’ Johnson.  Along with being an Inhuman who can control seismic waves, Daisy is additionally a high ranking Shield agent who led ‘Moth Squadron,’ a task force that had monitored Inhuman affairs.  Daisy had become suspicious of Hydra’s plots and Steve Rogers set her team on a mission that was covertly an ambush where her team was attacked by the villainous Wrecking Crew.

Daisy was ultimately able to defeat the Wrecking Crew, but her entire team was killed in action (including, it would appear, YoYo Rodriguez, the former Secret Warrior known as Slingshot – although I certainly hope she isn’t truly dead because it would be a terrible loss).

Aware of Rogers’ treachery, Daisy arranges a secret rendezvous with her trusted alley, Phil Coulson.  Coulson cannot believe that Rogers has gone rogue but agrees to investigate the matter and the two arrange to meet once more at a coffee shop in The Bronx.

Then the take over occurs and Hydra assumes control of the majority of the Eastern Seaborne.  The Inhumans are viewed as impure in accordance to Hydra’s racist world order and the city of New Attilan is sacked, its citizens arrested and placed in a heavily fortified internment camp.
Daisy awaits Coulson in the coffee shop but he never arrives, instead she is accosted by a group of her former fellow Shield agents who attempt to take her in for ‘reprogramming.’

Daisy is able to defeat these agents and she formulates a plan for mounting a resistance to Hydra’s rule.  A key facet to this plan is locating a freeing a specific Inhuman.  She calls upon the assistance of Ms. Marvel and Moon Girl to intercept a convoy she believes is transporting the individual Daisy is searching for.  It remains unclear how Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur managed to escape the DarkForce dome encasing Manhattan, but she agrees to join Ms. Marvel in taking out the convoy.  Ms. Marvel and Moon Girl are initially suspicious of Daisy; the other Shield agents have somehow turned evil, so what should make her different?  Fortunately, Daisy is able to pass Devil Dinosaur’s smell test… her scent seems clean to him and this is enough to assure Moon Girl and Ms. Marvel that Daisy is on the up and up.  There’s a good deal of tension and salty banter between the three.

It turns out that the convoy is not transporting the individual Daisy is looking for but is rather holding the young Inhuman, Inferno, as well as a pair of additional unnamed Inhumans.  Discouraged, Daisy dismisses her allies, opting to continue her mission on her own.  Yet Ms. Marvel, Moon Girl and now Inferno are not so easily deterred.  They have learned that The Inhumans are being kept at an internment camp and will not rest until their peoples are freed.

Daisy and Ms. Marvel continue not to see eye to eye.  Daisy feels that stealth and digression is advised whereas Ms. Marvel simply cannot stand by leaving their fellow Inhumans locked up in what is essentially a concentration camp.

Before the two can reach a consensus, Moon Girl takes matters into her own hands and approaches the front gate, distracting the guards long enough for Devil Dinosaur and the others to sneak up and begin to wreak havoc.  A massive battle erupts as many of the Inhumans are freed and fight against their Hydra captors.

Among the fracas, Daisy seeks out the specific Inhuman she has been searching out: Karnak.  Daisy needs Karnak, his ability to perceive the flaw in all things may prove essential in devising a stratagem for deafening Hydra.  Surprisingly, Karnak is not especially interested in being rescued.  He has once more retreated into a utterly pessimistic and nihilistic mindset.  With he loss of the Terrigen Cloud his race has been effectively doomed to extinction and he doesn’t feel especially concerned that the human nation of America is currently tearing itself apart.

Karnak’s mood and attitude shifts quite quickly when he sees that Moon Girl has accompanied Daisy in his rescue.  He is quite pleased to see Lunella and quite suddenly changes his mind and decides that he will join Daisy’s crusade after all.  This exchange entails what is sure to be my favorite panel of the day…

Karnak suggests, however, that who they truly need is not incarcerated in this camp, that he has instead been taken by The X-Men.  Whom Karnak is referring to and what The X-Men are up to are both matters left unrevealed as the issue ends on this cliffhanger.

A fun albeit slightly disjointed first issue.  The narrative is a bit hampered by being so tied into the goings-on in the pages of the main Secret Empire book.  I’m actually an issue behind on Secret Empire and, while I was still able to follow the plot, the enormity of the stakes did not quite sink in for me.  And this made it especially jarring to see characters like Ms. Marvel and Inferno fight with a level of ferocity that I’m not used to.  I realize that these villains are nazis and all nazis should die terrible deaths, but are some of the bad guys just mind controlled?  Whatever the case, Inferno straight up incinerates a number of goons and nazi or not it is quite disconcerting to see your heroes killing people.

Mathew Rosenberg’s decision to utilize a time-skipping narrative, jumping to points before and after the Hydra takeover is a risky choice.  It works for the most part, but also adds to the general feeling of the book being a mere side-story to the main tale taking place in Secret Empire.  My guess is that the main Secret Empire book has these matters covered and it may have been a smarter choice to focus on character development rather than the sinister mechanisms of Hydra’s plot.  As it stands, Daisy is offered development and motivation whereas Ms. Marvel, Moon Girl and Inferno feel more like supporting players.

Fortunately, Rosenberg excels at writing Daisy.  Nick Fury’s training has led her to suspect everyone and trust no one.  Just as she was coming to be able to rely on others, Steve Rogers turned on her and it cost her the lives of her team.  It has left her somewhat traumatized.  It is clear that she is fearful over the prospect of leading the younger Inhumans into battle… frightened over the idea of these young heroes also dying under her command.  Yet she attempts to suppress this fear through a rather transparent facade of jaded sass and quippy insults.

It’s clear from the get-go that Daisy and Ms. Marvel are not going to get along.  Even in these dire times, Kamala is unwilling to give up on her ideals of what it means to be a hero.  And this is sure to be at odds with the moral gray areas Daisy will need to resort to in order to succeed in their mission.  Daisy knows that this is war; and there’s no way to win a war without getting your hands dirty.  It’s a grim truth that Kamala is sure to have a great deal of difficulty with.

Karnak only shows up for the last few pages of the issue, but makes an interesting impression.  In the Karnak miniseries, Warren Ellis established the character as a supreme nihilist, a pessimistic curmudgeon who was wonderfully fun to read about despite his sour demeanor.  And yet this nihilism is cast in a very different light against the backdrop of a world taken over by fascists.  Everything that is sort of cool or appealing about ‘not caring’ is recast as complicit when such terrible things are occurring.  Yet Karnak has no interest in the world of humans and sees his own race as already doomed to extinction.

It is only the appearance of Lunella that changes Karnak’s mind.  It is not yet made entirely clear what it is about Lunella that causes this change in attitude.   My current guess is that Karnak sees in her a sense of dueling intellect and innocence that offers him the one things he feels is beyond him: hope.  Whatever the case, I’ll be very interested to see how Karnak and Lunella’s relationship evolves in future issues.

Javier Garrón’s art is on point.  He is asked to fill in a great deal of action is a relatively small number of pages and utilizes a panel economy that is highly busy while not disorganized (which I cannot imagine is easy to do).  The action is fluid and dynamic and he really excels at illustrating chaotic scenes.  The quieter scenes are a bit more static and I’m still warming up to Garrón’s particular approach to relaying facial expressions of emotion.

Colorist, Israel Silva, also does excellent work, especially in terms of using different pallets to distinguish those scenes set in the past versus those set in the present.  My one gripe is the curious choices of how Daisy and Kamala’s hair are colored.  For some reason, Daisy’s hair is now brown instead of black and Kamala’s black instead of brown.  I’m not sure why this decision was made and, while it’s a minor nitpick, I nevertheless hope it gets rectified in subsequent issues.

All in all this first issue feels more like a preview of Secret Warriors as opposed to its official debut.  It’s a good read, but being so tethered to the Secret Empire event is certainly a handicap.  A part of me feel like the real first issue of Secret Warriors will come when Secret Empire is over and Rosenberg and company can be free to tell their own story in a much more independent and unencumbered fashion.  Nonetheless, it’s still lots of fun and recommended.

Three out of Five Lockjaws

The Doc.X story hurdles to its climactic conclusion in this latest installment of the Hugo Award-nominated Ms. Marvel from the creative team of G. Willow Wilson, Takeshi Miyazawa and Ian Herring.  Full recap and review following the jump.

The villain known only as Doc.X has revealed itself as a living computer virus… a malware that has somehow gained sentience and will stop at nothing to augment its knowledge and power.  It is a learning program, yet it learned via online gaming chat boards where people are often quite nasty toward one another; and from this the sentience has cultivated a supremely malevolent and malignant morality.

Doc.X had attempted to blackmail Ms. Marvel into doing its bidding.  If she resisted then it would publish her friend, Zoe’s love letters to Nakia, forwarding them to all of the phones and email accounts of their entire high school.   Yet what Doc.X demanded, that it be plugged into the surveillance array at Shield, was far too much of a threat to all the world and Ms. Marvel had to resist.  Kamala warned Zoe, but nothing could stop her secret from being shared with all of their classmates.
Now Zoe has to show up at school, unwillingly outed as gay with all of her embarrassing declarations of love out there for everyone to see.   Mob mentality takes over and, defused of any sense of personal responsibility, her classmates begin to tease her mercilessly.  Poor Zoe… I feel so terribly for her.

Fortunately Zoe’s friends are there for her.  Nakia cannot reciprocate Zoe’s love on a romantic level but her love as a friend will always be there.  She embraces Zoe in a sign of solidarity.  Kamala sees this and hugs them both.  Mike and Gabe soon join in and before you know it a whole large group of friends are holding each other with Zoe in the center.  It’s a wonderful scene, illustrative of how getting over one’s sense of embarrassment and just being there for others easily overwhelms the shallow taunts and pettinesses of others.
It all gives Kamala an idea as to how to defeat Doc.X.  As corny as it may seem, the power of friendship and human decency is going to be her greatest weapon.

Somehow Kamala is able to convince her fellow guide members (the kids she has been campaigning with online) to all congregate in New Jersey.  They are quite surprised to discover that the person they have been gaming with is none other than Ms. Marvel, a real to life super hero!

Ms. Marvel explains to them all that has happened, that they had unwittingly helped in forging the malignant attributes of Doc.X.  Being so cruel and thoughtless in their comments had helped to craft Doc.X’s acidic persona and the only means of undoing it all is to demonstrate civility and kindness.  In short, they have to make the internet nice…  oy vey…

The guild recreates their first campaign only this time they are kind and cordial and considerate to each other.  Another campaign of gamers shows up, angry that they had been beaten to the boss level.  Rather than goading and shit-talking, Ms. Marvel’s campaign are instead apologetic and offer the other campaign all of the special awards and booty they had gathered.  The gesture has a dramatic effect.  Such graciousness is super unexpected in gaming; one player states that it’s the nicest thing anyone has ever done for them.

Mike monitors their progress from a separate computer, somehow spreading the message and proliferating this sentiment of goodwill.  Doc.X leaps onto her system and attempts to bully her, but already Ms. Marvel and the others’ actions are having an effect.  The niceness is corrupting Doc.X’s functionality, creating a paradox that it doesn’t know how to process.

Ms. Marvel leaves her fellow campaigners to keep up the good work while she initiates step two of her plan.  Now weakened, she needs to lure Doc.X out into the open, yet must find a location devoid of machinery or other people.  Unfortunately, she has lost track of the date and accidentally wanders right into the Jersey City Founder’s Day Parade.

Doc.X is unable to take over Ms. Marvel’s body, but it can take over the body of everyone else and now Kamala has accidentally led it to this huge mass of potential victims.  She tries to scatter the crowd telling them that they’re all in danger.  Unfortunately this is New Jersey and a young Muslim woman in a wild outfit spouting dire warnings of doom doesn’t exactly garner the response she had hoped for…

It’s too late!  Doc.X has found her.  It takes over the bodies of several of the parade participants and uses them to attack her with insults and super-powered punches.

Yet Doc.X can tell that it is growing weaker and weaker.  The niceness spread by Mike and the others is having its effect.  The power Doc.X has drawn from online cruelty has dissipated and it feels itself quickly becoming deleted.  Yet its not going to go without parting words of doom and gloom.  Paraphrasing Obi-Wan Kenobi, Doc.X states that it may be struck down but its malevolence will return stronger then ever.  It has tasted the spite in the heart of mankind and feels assured that humans are destined to be engulfed by their own primitive cruelty.

And just like that it is over.  One last punch from Ms. Marvel and Doc.X evaporates into the ether, leaving behind nothing but its dire warnings.

All and all this was a rather quick, somewhat anticlimactic conclusion to the story.  Although a sense of anticlimax is likely unavoidable in that the actual victory occurred in the prior issue when Zoe confided her crush to Nakia and the two were able to effectively deal with it and remain friends.

Doc.X is a purposefully one-dimensional and cliché villain.  It serves merely as a vehicle to explore the nature of interpersonal interactions in the modern, digital era.  How Ms. Marvel is ultimately able to defeat Doc.X is difficult to fully understand on a practical or logical level.  I’m not sure how one online gaming campaign can suddenly make the internet a friendly place.  On an emotional level, however, it all makes perfect sense.   Being mean and critical is easy and creates the illusion of power.  Whereas being nice and open can be difficult and embarrassing, yet it creates a true power… a power that can overwhelm and drown out that cruelty.

Anonymous, faceless cruelty, the kind one is likely to encounter online, has a special kind of valance.  Being anonymous, one can feel unburdened of responsibility and emboldened to give in to their more dark and mean inclinations.   And yet the same factors that make anonymous cruelty so malignant also offers anonymous kindness incredible power.  It is a truly selfless gesture the effects of which can be profound.

This is the dilemma that faces Kamala and her peers, indeed what faces the younger generation here in the real world.  Does one give in to the quick, easily-found ersatz strength of cruelty and division, isolation and solitude; or does one expose vulnerability, traverse embarrassment, and put in the hard work to be kind and inclusive and in so doing garner a true and legitimate strength?  Will Doc.X’s gloomy forecast of human nature come to pass or will a different more difficult but ultimately better path be taken?

Time will tell…

The Doc.X saga is going to go down as one the great comic tales of the modern era.  Of course recommended.  Five out of Five Lockjaws.

Shocking turns of events as our Royal heroes’ foray into the cosmos gets off to a very rocky start.  From the creative team of Al Ewing, Jonboy Meyers, Thony Silas, Jim Charalampidis and Ryan Kinnaird.

Aboard the starcraft, Astarion, Medusa, Black Bolt, Crystal, Gorgon, Swain and Flint are guided by Marvel Boy to the former Kree throne-world of Hala where he has stated they may discover the origins of Terrigen and in so doing offer a future to their doomed people.

So intent on fulfilling this mission, Medusa, the former Queen of The Inhumans, had managed to put off the intense ailment growing within her.   And yet, as the Astarion broke orbit, locks of her prehensile hair had begun to fall from her head and she could resist it no longer…  The last issue ended with Medusa announcing to her crew that she was dying.
Refusing to go back, The Astarion courses toward the edge of the solar system as Medusa lay in the medical bay with all manner of advanced equipment scanning her.  Her once impossibly long hair having all but dissipated, leaving behind close cropped pixie cut (somehow she still looks good).

The Astarion is named after a hero of ancient Inhuman lore, yet it seems as though the ship may actually belong to Marvel Boy; or at least he is much more familiar with its advanced workings than the others.  Crystal cannot make sense of the readings regarding her sister’s failing health; yet Marvel Boy has little difficulty understanding them.

Marvel Boy, or Noh-Varr, hails from an alternate reality, a different Kree Empire whose technology was centered on a strange psycho-conceptual basis.  The Kirby engines of his former ship were fueled by ideas whereby the power of epiphany enabled jumps between realities.   The strange nature of this technology colors Marvel Boy’s thinking allows him to see what it is that is so afflicting Medusa: she is dying of metaphor.

Marvel Boy explains that Medusa had made the decision to destroy the Terrigen Cloud.  She did what she had to in order to save the Mutant race, but in so doing she had doomed the future of her people.  Terrigen is a living force, Marvel Boy explains, it warps reality and changes biology and in as such blurs the line between science, mysticism and magic.  Medusa had pressed the button that took that all away and the enormity of the act has had the consequence of gradually draining the life energies from her.  Akin to dying of a broken heart, Medusa had acted to end a cultural heritage that had lasted millennia and her body has essentially chosen to end with it.

The others have no choice but to take Marvel Boy at his word, there is no other explanation for Medusa’s condition.  Nor is there a cure.  And yet, if their mission is a success, if they can ascertain the secrets of Terrigen and bring a new source of it back to their people, then it stands to reason that Medusa too will be revitalized (if she can hang on that long).

Oddly, Black Bolt, Medusa’s one-time husband and the loves of each other’s lives, remains cold and distant… almost aloof.  He is being told that his soulmate is dying and it seemingly has little effect on him; a matter not lost on Medusa nor the others.

Gorgon, however, has no such resistance to gushing over his dying queen.  Medusa continuously corrects him, she is no longer Queen of The Inhumans and doesn’t require being called by a royal title, but Gorgon refuses to do so.  For him, she will always be his queen and his pledges his undying fidelity to her.

It is all too much for young Flint.  Seeing Medusa in this condition overwhelms him with the memories of his adoptive parents dying, of his biological parents essentially abandoning him.  Medusa has become a powerful maternal figure to Flint and the prospect of losing her as well is too much to bear.  Panicked, unable to catch his breath, Flint runs from the room.

The dramatic scene is cut short by Captain Swain who calls down from the command center that the proximity sensors have altered them to a rapidly encroaching threat.  A massive swarm of Chitauri has entered the system on a trajectory that the Astarion cannot circumnavigate.  Trying to turn would just cause the swarm to hit the craft on its broadside and the team has not choice but to gear up and fight their way through the mass of space invaders.

The others hurry to their stations and Medusa rallies as well; she may be dying but is insistent on doing so on her feet.  Gorgon objects but Medusa will not hear it; she may no longer be queen, but she is still the commanding officer of the ship.

Medusa orders Swain to utilize her empathic abilities to help the crew feel a sense of calm and confidence.  Marvel-Boy has adjusted the weapons systems of the craft so to interface with his and Crystal’s powers.  His guns are configured virtual reality into the ship’s cannons; and Crystal’s elemental powers are likewise channeled into the Astarion’s weapon systems.

The two fire relentlessly into the Chitauri, blasting apart the various dragons and goblins that make up the swarm; yet they are hardly able to make a dent.  Gorgon and Flint, meanwhile, have put on space suits and cling to the exterior hull of the craft.  Gorgon uses his super strength to punch and rip apart the various goblins that come into his grasp.

Flint, however, is unsure what to do.  His Inhuman abilities entail the power to control rocks and minerals and there are no such things in the vacuum of space.

Medusa offers Flint a rather stern pep talk over the comms system, ultimately directing his attention to the planetoid of Pluto that The Asterian is now passing.  Pluto is essentially a rock and ostensively should be under Flint’s control.  The idea of it feels too big to Flint, a feat well outside of the scope of his ability, but Medusa presses on: he has to attempt it, he must succeed.
Flint concentrates, reaching out and feeling for his connection to the geological make-up of Pluto.  Suddenly he understands how to do it; it is not about pushing but rather pulling, like opening a door.  Flint pulls Pluto slightly off its axis, creating a massive gravitational well that sucks in a large swath of the swarm and smashes them against the surface of the planetoid.

How such a thing might work goes well beyond this reader’s rudimentary understanding of astrophysics, but somehow Flint’s action creates a hole in the swarm that The Astarion is able to fly through… allowing the craft to safely pass.  The others are astounded by Flint’s awesome feat.

What The Chitauri are doing in the solar system, where the swarm is headed is unknown, yet Medusa is confident that Captain Marvel’s defensive shields are more than capable of repelling the swarm if it is headed toward Earth.  She has more pressing matters to attend to: specifically Black Bolt.  Or is it Black Bolt?

Medusa tells him that he can drop the act; she knows who he really is.  The lack of intimacy and communication between them was enough of a giveaway on its own; his shrinking in the face of the Chitauri threat has sealed it.  He is not Black Bolt, he is Maximus!  Somehow Maximus has traded places with his brother.

Discovered, Maximus merely smiles and sheds his psychic disguise.  ‘Maximus The Mad,’ he sneers, ‘at your service.’

And it is with this surprising twist that the issue ends with the promise of continuation in the next installment.

As was the case with the first issue, this issue begins with a prologue set thousands of years in the future.  It shows a thus far unspecified realm where the last Inhuman shepherds a flock of ghostly beings, techno-astral projections encased in human-snapped bags.  These wraiths operate and monitor the workings of some unknown citadel, maintaining vigilance against looming threats.  A claxon sounds off heralding the approach of such a threat.  It is a ‘memento mori’ a reminder that there can be no escape from the inevitability of death.

It remains unknown how these prologue vignettes relate to the story at hand; the two are certain to tie together in a future issue.  Also unknown is the identity of this ‘last Inhuman.’  Although lithe and aged, he bears a resemblance to Black Bolt… although he could be Maximus.  It’s a mystery I’m looking forward to see uncovered.

A suitable follow up to a fantastic first issue.  Writer, Al Ewing’s script is tight and well-paced.  Ewing doubles down on the outré science fiction thematic of the tale and does so unapologetically, rapidly moving from one way-out idea to the next so quickly that there isn’t time to step back and take note that none of it makes sense.  It all sort of merges science fiction with magical realism.

The concept that Medusa is dying from the ‘poetic revenge of a mystical element’ is wonderfully bizarre… like something pulled from a Gabriel Garcia Marquez novel.  Whereas Marvel Boy’s tethering Crystal’s powers into the Astarion’s weapons system via virtual reality feels like something from Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game.  Ewing mixes together these disparate elements of science-fiction and fantasy in a seamless fashion, creating a wild tale where the reader simply has no choice but accept the bizarre ideas thrown our way.

Although the signs were all there I was still rather surprised by the reveal that Maximus had switched places with his brother.  Others had guessed this twist before I had (*cough* Adam and Seren).   It sets things up nicely for the Black Bolt solo series scheduled to launch next month; which will see Black Bolt stranded in some sort of cosmic penitentiary (a fate that was meant for Maximus as punishment for his crimes).

The theory had been that Maximus had engineered some kind of body swap, projecting his consciousness into Black Bolt’s body and trapping Black Bolt’s consciousness in his own body.  Although now it appears that Maximus has used a new trick, creating a psychic disguise making him appear to be Black Bolt and Black Bolt appear as Maximus.  And this explains how Black Bolt can appear in his solo series in his own body with his own powers.

Maximus’ capacity to create such an illusion is a new wrinkle on his power-set, but a welcome one in that it sets up this wild twist.   Of course this also means that team will be without the aide of Black Bolt and instead will be saddled with Maximus’ unreliable tomfoolery… a matter that is sure to make their mission all the more difficult to achieve.

Ewing’s dialogue is equally crisp, managing an impressive balance between the high concept ideas and the heavy emotions the characters are all feeling.  A highlight is Medusa’s efforts to goad Flint into expanding his powers so to control Pluto’s orbit.

Medusa chooses an interesting psychological approach, baiting Flint with his fears and issues of abandonment.  She forces Flint to face his anxiety, channeling his panic into his powers and ultimately helping him to extend his abilities to a huge new limit.  Not exactly a tactic I’d utilize in psychotherapy, but a method that proves effective nonetheless.

Unfortunately, the issue’s art is not quite on par with the script.  Jonboy Meyers shares penciling duties with Thony Silas with each artist illustrating alternating scenes.  Silas seems to be trying to mimic aspects of Meyers’ style in an attempt to maintain a sense of aesthetic continuity, but the effort is unsuccessful.  Silas is a great illustrator, but not great at imitating Meyers and the result is that Meyers’ pages are just notably better; and the shift in quality is quite jarring, so much so that it at times took me out of the story.   It’s unclear whether or not The Royals is going to continue as a bimonthly book.  If this is to be the case, then it might be wise for Meyers and Silas to trade off illustrating individual issues on their own.  In my opinion the two are better apart than they are in tandem.

The chapter is entitled ‘We Are The Dead’ and is named after the David Bowie song from his 1974 album, Demon Dogs.  It’s an appropriate tile in lieu of that song; you can listen to it here.

The illustrative hiccup notwithstanding, another fanatic ride and definitely recommended; Four out of Five Lockjaws!