Attilan Rising Podcast

It’s the beginning of a whole new arc as Moon G and Devil D embark on an adventure that finds them in the mysterious realm of the Dream Dimension.  From the likely sleep-deprived creative team of Brandon Montclare, Natacha Bustos and Tamra Bonvillain.

Lunella Lafayette has been having the worst time sleeping of late… and she’s not the only one.  Her nights have been fitful, filled with anxiety dreams and nightmares, all leaving her waking up completely unrested.  And it would appear as though most of her classmates are additionally plagued by troubled sleep, struggling with their own bad dreams… the teachers too.  It’s almost as if all of Public School #20 has been infected by some sort of syndrome of bad sleep and troubling dreams.

After taking one two many hits in dodgeball during gym class, Lunella has had enough and she sneaks through the maze of nebulous air-duct tunnels that lead to her secret laboratory under the school.  There she finds Devil Dinosaur, snoring away.  She joins him, snuggling up for some much needed sleep.

Whatever hopes Lunella had for getting the rest she needs are quickly dashed as she finds herself once more engulfed in another vibrant dream.  Yet this one seems different, more real and elaborate.  A voice informs her that she has entered the ‘dream dimension,’ a preternatural realm outside of reality.

The voice emanates from a slight figure perched atop a giant purple mushroom.  He introduces himself as ‘Bad Dream’ the wonder warlock, the baddest dream demon of them all.

Lunella is less than impressed.  She’s gone up against likes of the Omnipotis, The Kingpin and Mr. Sinister… some kid in a halloween costume isn’t going to scare her.

Little kid or not, it does seem as though this Bad Dream fellow has been the one responsible for ruining everyone’s sleep and filling their heads with nightmares.  Bad Dream doesn’t seem to think of the matter as all that big a deal.  He feels those who live in the waking world have got it made.   Whereas it looks as though Bad Dream may be stuck in the Dream Dimension, with only his Cloud Chimera for companionship.

This Cloud Chimera is this long, translucent,  jellyfish-looking creature whom Bad Dream states protects him.  Together they’re a team… not altogether unlike Lunella and Devil D.

Rather suddenly, Bad Dream decides that it is very important that Lunella leave.  It isn’t clear whether or not the little guy has grown bored of Lunella’s company or (more likely) he feels it no longer safe for her to be there.  He demands she leave, but Lunella isn’t budging… not until Bad Dream promise to stop his funny business and let people start getting better sleep.

Bad Dream ups his demand that Lunella shove off, chasing her off atop his Cloud Chimera.  Outmatched, Lunella has no choice other than to wish herself awake.  Suddenly, she finds herself back in her lab… once again thoroughly unrested.

But she and Devil Dinosaur are not alone!  Somehow the Cloud Chimera has transcended through the dream dimension into the real world.  At first Lunella imagines she must still be dreaming, but this is no dream.  She’s in real danger.  The Chimera swoops and circles about the lab, chasing Lunella until Devil D finally catches it with a devastating chomp.  And with this the Chimera dissipates into a fog, returning to the dream dimension.

It all leaves Lunella quite aware that something serious is afoot… and all of this is not going to go away by merely hiding under the covers.  Moon Gilr and Devil Dinosaur are going to have to do something about this… but how?  Dreams and alternate dimensions, creatures made of clouds… this is not the realm of science; this is something more.  This is magic.  And Lunella hates magic!  Fortunately she knows just the right guy ideal to help her out.  And the preview art for the next issue shows exactly who that is.  So gear up for another Moon Girl and Doctor Strange team-up adventure!  Nice!!!

A great first issue of the arc, one that has me very exciting for the next installment.

With Lunella being as smart as she is, it is often necessary to pose her against dilemmas where she cannot easily use her intellect to devise a solution.  And the mystical realm of the dream dimension with all of the weird denizens therein fits the bill perfectly.

Lunella’s interactions with Dr. Strange back during the World’s Smartest arc were an absolute riot and I cannot wait to see more of it; the two of them are so fun and funny together, I’m quite pleased that they’re getting another adventure alongside one another.

Dreams, the psyche and the unconscious have all remained rather vexing to the world of science.  Science has discovered and figured out so much about so many things, yet the inner workings of the human brain remains highly mysterious, all but impenetrable to the conventional tools of scientific study.  Sure we know what happens in the brain when we dream, what regions are active and the functional utility of dreaming, but the meaning behind those dreams, the places they take us and the way they can make us feel remains subjective, nebulous, utterly confounding.  It’s the kind of psychological quagmire that raw intelligence is ill equipped to contend with.  A wonderful foil for out Lunella.

Bad Dream is a curious new character.  At first I figured he prove to be the son of the demonic villain and Dr. Strange foe known as Nightmare.  And this may still be the case, yet it’s looking more like he is just some normal little boy who has somehow found himself stuck in the dream dimension unable to return to the real world.  Whatever the case, I’m definitely looking forward to finding out more.  Plus I just love his costume.

Artists Natacha Bustos and Tamra Bonvillain really get to stretch their creative muscles in depicting the dream dimension and it’s all just a delight to behold.  They get a really neat slash page of Lunella’s being pulled into the dream realm and definitely make the best of it.

Following the Save Our School arc, which took place entirely in the real world confines of the Lower West Side, it’s really neat to see Bustos and Bonvillain illustrate a more fantasy-oriented setting.  Ms. Bustos offers up a wonderful landscape of floating orbs, giant mushrooms and living clouds.  And Ms. Bonvillain enlivens it all with darkened pastels, neat shades of pink and purple that makes the realm seem both dark and mysterious while also vibrant and uncanny.  Much like a dream.  Steve Ditko would surely approve.

And so do it.  Not to be missed.  A great beginning to what looks to be a very fun arc.  Four and a half out of five Lockjaws!

It’s the thrilling conclusion of Ms. Marvel’s battle against The Shocker as both Kamala and Bruno are forced to fend off not only the villain but also the spinning forces of destiny.  All from the creative team of G Willow Wilson, Nico Leon and Ian Herring.

The Shocker has spent most of his costumed career as a low grade goon, a periodic pest to the likes of Spider-Man.  He has never managed to rise above this station, make it to the level of arch nemesis, a true super villain.  Well, he’s sick of it and has trudged across the Hudson to Jersey City with eyes to redefine himself and accomplish his dreams of becoming a better bad guy.

The Shocker’s relative ineptitude as a costumed cad notwithstanding, he is something of a brilliant inventor.  Hoping to build a doomsday device to allow him to fulfill his dreams, The Shocker accidentally created a temporal vortex, a wormhole in time and space that connects to the multiverse.

And doing so has played havoc on Kamala’s Inhuman powers, making it incredibly difficult for her to control her ability to stretch, shrink and embiggon.  At first, Kamala and Bruno believed that her sudden inability to control her powers had something to do with experiments they’d conducted to try to understand the nature and upper limit of these powers.

Through it all, Bruno has been able to figure out how Kamala’s powers work, how she is able to increase and decrease her mass without affecting volume.  It turns out that Kamala’s mass-altering abilities is all about borrowing and depositing tiny amounts of mass across a countless number of her future selves across the multiverse.

Well, that answers that… but Kamala and Bruno still have to deal with The Shocker and shut down his experiment.  After a quick jaunt through the membrane of the multiverse, the two pop back into their own reality ready for action.  Ms. Marvel gets to super-heroing up The Shocker while Bruno dashes to the source of the vortex so to somehow turn it off.

Bruno follows the vortex back to its source, discovering The Shocker’s odd, cobbled-together base.  The device that had created this vortex has been left on for too long and is now creating a rapidly growing Einstein–Rosen bridge rift in time and space.  It is spinning out of control, threatening to grow so large that it could swallow up all of the city.

Bruno pushes down his fear and climbs up into the base, searching out the source of the vortex.  He finds The Shocker’s device, but struggles to figure out how it might be turned off.  He ultimately realizes that the vortex might be un-made by causing conflicting forces to negate one another.  There’s a lot of comic book style science here that I’m not even going to pretend I can understand.  Suffice to say, Bruno is able to arrange these negating forces and they do indeed cancel out the vortex, shutting the device off.

Meanwhile, Ms. Marvel and The Shocker continue their battle.  The Shocker attempts to rile up Ms. Marvel with typical bad guy banter about how she is just a puppet, a cog in the machine maintaining the status quo.  The Shocker sees himself as a middle of the road bad guy and Ms. Marvel as a middle of the road good guy; he argues that the only way to break into the big leagues is to break the rules, defy what other expect and seize hold of one’s own destiny.

His villainous ambitions aside, The Shocker’s desire for self-improvement is kind of admirable.  Unfortunately for him, he ends up caught up in the chaos he had unleashed as both he and Ms. Marvel find themselves sucked back into that limbo space between dimensions.

This is the realm of Singularity, the playful and benevolent being Ms. Marvel had encountered in the previous issue.  Singularity attempts to once more assist Ms. Marvel, yet she can sense that the wormhole is about to close.  Bruno’s actions to cancel out the vortex is about to succeed and Ms. Marvel needs to exit through this doorway before it closes or else risk bing lost forever in this realm between realms.

Yet the Shocker doesn’t want to be rescued.  He refuses to let go of the notion that this is his path toward greater things; and refuses to let go of Ms. Marvel.  Well, Ms. M is absolutely at the end of her rope with The Shocker and gives him the boot… kicking him off of her and sending him careering off to who knows where.

Singularity brings Ms. Marvel to her home dimension just as Bruno succeeds in turning off the device.  The crisis is averted, the villain has been defeated; the day is saved.

Some time later, a new vortex opens up for a quick moment in Brooklyn… just long enough to deposit The Shocker into a trash dumpster.  And it just so happens that Spider-Man is hanging out right there, very much ready to web up the villain and hand him over to the authorities.

A thoroughly defeated Shocker sees that he’s in Brooklyn, sees Spider-Man, and realizes the entirety of his defeat.

Back in Jersey City, Kamala and Bruno find one another.  They’re both exhausted, both rather overwhelmed by all that has happened and all of the feelings it has churned up in them.  Yet both have done enough for the day… they’ll deal with it all, but not today.  Instead they go get gyro sandwiches.  And it is here that the story comes to an end.

This was the first story arc that Wilson and company has offered up since the commemoration of Ms. Marvel’s fiftieth issue.  And if this adventure provides any indication, it looks as though the second fifty issues of Ms. Marvel are going to be just as great as the first fifty.

Just like the vortex at the center of this story, there is a whole lot of stuff that spins about the tale.  There is the discovery and explanation of Kamala’s super powers; the mixed up feelings Kamala and Bruno have for each other; Bruno’s contending with his past injuries and the looming worry that it will result in his being remanded to a wheelchair; the threat posed by The Shocker; the sense of pressure Kamala feels toward living up to both her own and her family’s expectations; as well as further breadcrumbs regarding the mystery of Kamala’s lineage…  All of these components spin about wildly throughout the course of the story and somehow Wilson and company get it all to land like puzzle pieces that come together on their own.  It is just super impressive.

The Shocker’s hammy attempt at villainous banter helps to underline the central theme of coping with one’s fate without feeling powerless to one’s destiny.  Yes, I realize that may seem like a stupid sentence, but fate and destiny are not completely interchange words.    ‘Fate’ is what is going to happen; it is out of our control.  Whereas ‘destiny’ is what one is meant to do and seizing upon it is in one’s control.  It may be Bruno’s fate that he will lose the use of his legs, life in a wheelchair may be something he simply cannot avoid.  Yet his destiny of having a happy and fulfilling life despite this handicap is a matter within his control.  And it is on him to choose to try to seize this destiny.

Bruno got to see a multitude of possible futures for Kamala and he has no way of know which if those futures will come to be as the one in store for them.  They may be living in the reality for Kamala becomes president; they may be in the reality where Kamala ends up with The Red Dagger; they may be in the one where Bruno and Kamala get married; they may be in one that wasn’t shown.  There’s no way of knowing.   Yet that doesn’t mean that Bruno is powerless in the face of destiny.  To the contrary, he is going to do whatever he can to seize upon that destiny and try to make the one he most wants come to fruition.  And to this extent he is no longer going to push away his feelings.  He tells Kamala that he loves her, that he’s in love with her.

Whether or not Kamala loves him back remains undermined.  Of course she loves Bruno, but doesn’t know if she is in love with him.  Her destiny remains a bit more clouded.   There are futures in store for her where she may achieve greatness, some where she is burdened with terrible loss; some where she finds happiness and others where she does not.  She could become the president or she might become a post-apocalyptic warrior; she might end up with a quiet life being happily married or might end up with a life of action and adventure.

The Shocker sees himself as a middle-of-the-road villain and he attempted to buck that fate by reaching for a destiny of greatness.    And Kamala is in a similar position.  She’s a hero, but she is still young, still lacking in experience.  Will she remain a middle-of-the-road hero, or will she attain greatness?  Her true fate is unknown and is ultimately out of her hands.  And yet how she may try to seize upon a destiny is in her control.  To do so, however, entails figuring out what it is she truly wants… which of those multitude of futures is the best fit for her.
She doesn’t know yet; it’s something she still needs to figure out.  And I’m definitely sticking around to find out.

Again, the art and coloring matches the writing flawlessly.  Wilson, Leon and Herring achieve a synchronicity that is increasingly rare in mainstream comics these days.  Creative teams flux and bounce around so often that writer, artist and colorist don’t get the time to really getting synched up.  Wilson, Leon and Herring have been making Ms. Marvel comics together for a long while now and it is really paying off… offering a cohesion where the art and words compliment each other and offering a final product that is greater than the sum of its parts.

Four out of five Lockjaws for the individual issue and five out of five Lockjaws for the story arc as a whole.

We’re closing in on the end of the end as writer Donny Cates, illustrator Ariel Olivetti and color artist, Jordie Bellaire offer up this penultimate installment of the miniseries.

A fanatical faction of the Kree Empire have sacked New Arctillan and slaughtered its citizens.  Led by their mysterious war chief, a being known only as Vox, these villains have captured Black Bolt and a ghastly operation was conducted on him, removing his larynx and robbing him of his most significant power.  Medusa and what remains of the Royal Family have fled to a distant planet in the cosmos where they have elicited the aide of the powerful Korbinite bruiser known as Beta Ray Bill.

It turns out that Bill and Lockjaw were old friends and brothers in arms.  The two had had many adventures together and forged a bond that was quite important to them both.  Learning that Lockjaw has been among the many casualties of the Kree’s assault is more than enough to motivate Bill to fight alongside The Inhumans.  Although he is clear that his doing so has’t nothing to do with The Inhuman peoples; what he does he does for the dog.

Back on Hala, Black Bolt has managed to free himself from his imprisonment and cuts his way through the Kree forces.  He no longer has the full might of his voice, but he can manage a whisper and, at close range, this whisper is more than enough to cause significant damage.

Black Bolt fights his way through the Kree soldiers yet knows he is outmatched when he comes to face several battleships that flank him.  It is here that Vox catches up with him and he continues to goad the former king with insults and cruelty.

All that the Kree have needed from Black Bolt has already been taken.  They no longer require him alive and Vox unsheathes his menacing scythe looking to kill the midnight king once and for all.  Black Bolt is able to dodge Vox’s attacks, but the villain is too powerful…  Black Bolt is outmatched.

Vox’s mouthguard opens, revealing a skinless mouth and a skeletal smile.  It looks as though he is going to deliver his killing blow.  Before he can, however, Beta Ray Bill’s powerful hammer, Stormbreaker, careens forth and strikes Vox in the face.

It’s a devastating blow, leaving Vox seemingly defeated.  Medusa and the others race to the scene and we’re treated to a brief, tender of scene of Medusa and Black Bolt reunited.

A severely wounded Vox attempts to crawl away.  Crystal stands above him, needing to know who this monster is.  It mutters, begging that she stay back. Crystal seems to recognize the voice, she can almost make out his face…
Just then an energy emits from Vox’s body.  The emission engulfs Crystal and dissolves her away.

Karnak leaps forward, delivering precision strikes one after another until the monster is dead.  It is only then, with Vox’s helmet fully destroyed, that his identity is revealed.  He appears to be Maximus!

But how can this be so?  Maximus was one of Vox’s casualties during the attack on New Arctillan.  The others had seen video footage of Vox dissolving Maximus with a blast emerging from his mouth.  What is going on here?

A horrifying hypothesis begins to dawn on Karnak and the others.  Perhaps Vox is not just one villain, but many… a legion of Frankenstein’s monsters composed of stolen powers stitched together.

The scene shifts to show Crystal having been instantly teleported to some unknown locale.  She seems to be in a kind of assembly-line laboratory.  She sees countless Inhumans trapped inside chrysalis-style pods.  She recognizes Triton among them.

This, it would appear, is how the Kree have been creating their new weapons.  Taking Inhumans and utilizing surgical procedures to extract powers and repurpose them into composite beings.  Crystal is trapped on a kind of operating table and unable to escape.  She screams as Kree surgeons stand by and begin the process of disassembling her.    A new set of Vox’s armor awaits nearby, waiting to be filled by whatever pieces of Crystal and other Inhumans have been extracted.

There are dozens of such armors, countless Vox soldiers ready to be filled with repurposed parts and pieces of the helpless Inhuman hostages.
And it is on this horrifying note that the issue comes to an end with the story to be concluded in the next and final chapter.

Yikes, what a frightening and gruesome turn of events!  This is not only the death of the Inhumans, it is the dissection and desecration of the Inhumans.  It’s all quite frightening and stomach-turning.

The Kree had originally created The Inhumans centuries ago.  And while the progeny of their experiments created powerful beings, The Kree were never able to fully utilize them as the weapons they were meant to be.  These Inhumans had wills of their own and they could not be forced to bend to the will of The Empire.

Well, it would appear that this new faction of The Kree have devised a solution to this problem.  The Inhumans could not be controlled, so instead those deemed worthy are captured and collected; their powers removed and repurposed, transported into golems of stitched together flesh and organs, somehow imbued with a consciousness obedient to the Kree Empire.

While this makes for an intriguing (albeit gory) twist, there still remains a lot of questions of how all this actually works.  How did Vox possess Lockjaw’s teleportation powers before Lockjaw himself was captured?   How did the Kree get ahold of Triton when he was seemingly blown apart back on that planet where the Universal Inhuman Queens were slaughtered?  Are Inhuman powers actually localized within organs and tissue?  Is Maximus really dead?  And what do these Kree do with their Inhuman victims after the surgeries are conducted?

I imagine these questions will be addressed in the final issue, but I’m not sure I want to know the answers… especially considering the cover art preview showing Black Bolt kneeling before a butchered Lockjaw.

Vox’s grisly origins make for a neat twist and shocking revelation.  And there are some glimmers of hope offered up that things might end up not as bad as it may seem when the story finally concludes.  Both Naja and Sterlion are shown among the captured Inhumans suggesting that they may end up surviving when all is said and done

These glimmers of hope notwithstanding, there continue to be aspects of this story that sit quite poorly with me.  There is an element of sadism in all of this.  There are many stories where the hero or heroes are beaten down low only to rise back up triumphant.  And this may prove to be no different… but it kind of feels over the top.  Is it really necessary to push the Inhumans so deep into the mud?

Surgical dissection is perhaps the most defiling things that can happen to a character.  It is the ultimate in bodily invasion and desecration.  It is a kind of non-sexual rape and I sort of shudder at the idea that these characters who I love so dearly are being offered up as victims for whatever readers out who get off on this sort of stuff.
This is not a book I would read were the Inhumans not involved.  The writing is good, the art is good, the coloring is fantastic… but this story is gross.  The sadistic quality is quite unsettling.

Introducing Beta Ray Bill into the story is a neat idea.  He’s a cool character and I very much enjoyed the quick flashback story of him and Lockjaw battling Blasstar and his forces (notice that Lockjaw is ‘worthy’ enough to lift Stormbreaker!).  And yet Beta Ray Bill’s involvement is itself something of another insult thrown at the Inhumans.  Bill gets to be the one who defeats Vox; and he does so easily.  Gorgon and Crystal once more sit around and do nothing.  Again it is cool that Bill is involved, but why not have it be Crystal who defeats Vox, or the combined efforts of Crystal, Gorgon, Karnak and Medusa?  Four issues in and these characters have done nothing but sit on their asses.

It all adds to my paranoid sense of this series being something akin to a type of  punishment.  The Inhumans television show was an abject flop and the comics featuring the Royal Family did not sell especially well.  On top of that, there were many who were angry and outraged that Marvel should have the audacity to try and elevate The Inhumans in the Marvel Universe.
The Inhumans will never be The X-Men and there is no doubt that trying to use them to in some respects replace the X-Men was a mistake.  Fine.  That whole deal is over.  Yet rather than just allowing The Inhumans to return back to the fringe margins of the Marvel Universe they are instead offered up for some weird public flogging.

Again, this is a paranoid notion and I’m aware of its hyperbolic qualities.  I’m kind of just venting so apologies if I am coming across as overreacting.  No one reads comics in a vacuum and things going on in the real world has me feeling especially raw… most certainly affecting how this story resonates with me on a personal level and inhibiting the capacity to see it in a more objective manner.

With that in mind, Death of The Inhumans #4 has some cool action, neat art and a cool twists.  Yet the issue itself left me feelings cold, angry and kind of depressed.  Two out of four Lockjaws.

Things go from bad to worse as Moon Girl finds herself facing off against not only the Kingpin of Crime and his bratty adopted daughter, but also the dreaded Wrecking Crew.  And rather than having the powerful Devil Dinosaur at her side, Lunella is instead stuck with far less useful Devin Dinosaur.  All from the creative team of Brandon Montclare, Natacha Bustos and Tamra Bonvillain.

Lunella is the smartest person in the world.  Still, when one is only nine years old, being so smart can be something of a double-edged sword.  A person this age can know and understand things on a cognitive level but not yet posses the emotional faculties and sense of wisdom needed to fully cope with this knowledge.  And to make things worse, there is the powerlessness of being a child, so often unable to do anything about all this information and the multitude of problems and injustices that are perceived and understood.  This is true for many kids who are precociously gifted in terms of their intellect and is especially true for Lunella.
In Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur, this dichotomy has been metaphorically put forward by way of Lunella’s special relationship with Devil Dinosaur.  While Lunella represents pure intellect and the capacity for dispassionate and pragmatic analysis; Devil Dinosaur represents raw id, emotion and the tendency to leap before looking.

And this metaphor is solidified by the way in which Lunella and Devil D will periodically switch bodies… trapping Lunella’s consciousness in Devil D’s body and his in hers… always at the most disadvantageous of times.  Lunella has all these important thing she feels she must do… yet all too often right before she can get them done she will suddenly find herself in the powerful but cumbersome body of Devil D.  While Devil D’s mind ends up in her body causing all manner of embarrassing mayhem and usually a dashing of her intricate plans.

Well, Lunella has had enough of it and she has decided to use her super intellect to devise a plan to undo this bothersome dilemma.  She’s built an elaborate scientific device, a machine meant to prevent her and Devil D from switching consciousnesses.  But something was wrong in her calculations.  Something malfunctioned and instead of preventing their mind switches, the result ended up transforming Devil D into a rambunctious nine-year-old boy with wild red hair and the mind of a tyrannosaurus.
I hate it when that happens.

All of this has occurred in the backdrop of a serious threat to Lunella’s school.  Somehow the villainous Wilson Fisk, The Kingpin of Crime, has snaked his way into becoming the Mayor of New York City.  He’s also introduced his newly adopted daughter, Princess, and together they have set about a plot to shut down those public schools who are falling behind in terms of meeting some type of newly devised metric of adequate academic achievement.
No, this isn’t how municipal politics works… mayors don’t really have the power to close public schools at a whim, but it’s comics so lets just go with it.  It remains unclear why it is Fisk and Princess are so intent on shutting Lunella’s school, but I’m sure there is some sort of nefarious purpose to it all.

Well, Moon Girl isn’t going to let this happen.  And it has all resulted in her ending up face to face with the powerful Wrecking Crew, a cadre of villains who have held their own against the likes of The Avengers, Spider-Man and Thor.  Uh oh…

The Wrecking Crew’s mission is two fold.  One they have been hired by Fisk to destroy Lunella’s school; and two they’ve also been tasked with capturing Devil Dinosaur.  Why?  Because Princess wanted her own dinosaur just like Lunella has… and whatever The Kingpin’s little girl wants, The Kingpin’s little girl is going to get…

Well, Moon Girl is able to hold her won against The Wrecking Crew despite not having the aide of her dinosaur buddy.  Still, she knows it’s a battle that she cannot win and tries to retreat.

And it is here that she gets wise to the Crew’s ulterior motive… that they’re also here to destroy the school.  She can’t let this happen, but shat can she possibly do to stop it?

In the midst of all this, Devin (the little boy version of Devil Dinosaur) ends up getting hurt.  This appears to trigger something in him and he transforms into his original dinosaur-sized self.  Now the tables have turned!

Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur are able to chase off the Wrecking Crew, but a great deal of damage to the school has already been done.  The battle is won, but the way is far from over.

Later, we get a brief scene between Princess and The Kingpin.  Princess is frustrated that she is not as smart as Lunella, that she is not as well liked, doesn’t have the esteem of her peers; doesn’t have her own dinosaur…  Fisk offers up the strange kind of fatherly advice that only he is capable of.  There are different kinds of power in the world.  There are the gifts one is born with and the gifts that one takes as their own.   In short, ‘if you can’t beat ‘em, then cheat’em.’

Meanwhile, back in her laboratory, Lunella continues to attempt to refine her invention and devise a means to prevent the mind switching between her and Devil D.  Devil D is none too please over then, nor are Lunella’s two ersatz lab-assistance, Doom Head and Lunella-Bot-7.  These two advise that Lunella needs to accept her situation for what it is.  One cannot change who they are and sometimes it is the more prudent move to learn to live with such matters rather than try to change them.

Yet Lunenlla isn’t hearing it.  She’s set on completing this process and endeavors through numerous iterations of the process each time ending in failure.  Ultimately, she realizes that this problem is not going to be fixed today.  Perhaps one day she’ll be able to figure out a means of achieving her goal, but for now she has a more pressing matter to attend to.

Tomorrow she and her fellow students at school will be administered a standardized test…  a test the results of which will be used to determine whether or not the school should or should not be shut down.  With Lunella’s intellect, this test should be no problem and her performance should be enough to pull up the overall average and ensure that the school itself will pass.  That is, unless something goes wrong…

And it is here the the issue comes to a conclusion with he promise of continuation in the next installment.

There is some very fun action and neat character development in this issue; and of course there is the truly brilliant art and colors from Bustos and Bonvillain that makes every issue a joy to behold…  Although the installment does suffer a bit from having to adhere to the new normal in comics.  That being that the stories are set up as arcs that will neatly fit in republished trade paperbacks.  And to this extent, there are often issues in the middle that frequently feel like filler… a way of extending the middle of a tale without adding significant material to the overarching plot and premise.

This is not something unique to Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur.  It is pretty much endemic to nearly every super hero comic on the stands.  Brendan Montclare is a hugely talented writer and one of his many skills is the capacity for succinct storytelling and the ability to get to the point in a clear, expedient fashion.  And this acts to make these ‘filler issues’ a touch more vexing.  The thematic that was so solidly detailed in the previous issue is pretty much reiterated in this issue.

Although it’s possible I am being unfair and losing sight of the fact that I’m an adult reading a comic aimed toward both younger and older readers alike,  Younger readers may very well benefit from having these themes reiterated, further hammered home.

And I should clarify on what I see as this theme.  That being that Lunella values her intelligence but undervalues her emotionality.  These distinct features are bifurcated in her relationship with Devil D.  She wants to fully separate the two, believing that she will be better off without her unruly feelings of emotionality and having them fully transferred over and consolidated within Devil D.  Doom Head and Lunella Bot 7 act as the foils to this folly.  They argue in their own ways that Lunella needs to be true to herself, accept who she is and realize that intellect combined with emotion creates a matrix that is greater than the sum of the individual parts.  It is a truth that I’m sure she will ultimately come to realize… of this I have little doubt.  But she is only nine, and has many mistakes to make before she fully accepts this important fact of life.

Good stuff.  Once again a highly recommended issue with looks of cool action, some good laughs and a poignant theme.  Three and a half out of four Lockjaws!

It’s the climatic conclusion of this first adventure from Marvel Rising, as writer Devin Grayson is joined by illustrators Georges Duarte and Roberto Di Salvo along with colorist Rachelle Rosenberg.  Ms. Marvel, Squirrel Girl and The Gang must face off in a final confrontation with the dreaded Arcade who has now gained the awesome powers of Emmulator.  And you just know that mayhem and hi jinx in sure to unfold.

Adolescence has not been easy on young Ember Quaid.  She’s been quite lonely, rather depressed and maintains a grossly diminished sense of self esteem.  Her mother has moved her from town to town, city to city, continuously looking for a new place to start over and all this has left young Ember feeling adrift and rudderless, no friends, no sense of constancy… convinced that she might as well not even try making a life for herself in that it’ll be only a matter of time that her mother uprooted them to start over someplace else.

And if that weren’t enough, Ember is also an Inhuman.  Her latent Inhuman genes were activated following exposure to the Terrigen Cloud.  It took her time to realize it, but Ember’s Terrigenesis had actually imbued her with tremendous powers… the ability to take in electrical energy and reconfigure it into all manner of hard-light constructs.

Multiplayer online video games had been Ember’s one respite, the one place where she didn’t feel powerless, where she’d didn’t feel like a loser.  She excelled at these games, loved playing them and they became her one true escape from the difficulties of real life.  That is until a group of chauvinistic boys took exception to their being so fully trounced by a female player.  Before she knows it, Ember has been frozen out of her gaming accounts and the one bright spot of her life, her one respite from a difficult life, has been taken away.   It was all enough to break poor Ember’s spirit and leave her highly vulnerable to being influenced and manipulated by nefarious forces.

Utilizing a renegade faction of A.I.M., the villain known as Arcade had identified Ember and the tremendous power she possesses.  Arcade slithered his way into Ember’s life, presenting himself as an anonymous online friend and commiserator.  It was he who actually froze Ember out of her gaming accounts and he who coaxed her into using her newfound Inhuman powers to extract vengeance on all those who had wronged her.

Individuals like Ember, lonely and desperate for acknowledgment and attachment can be especially susceptible to being manipulated; and a cad like Arcade knows all the tricks needed to seize upon such vulnerabilities and get their victims to do all manner of things they normally wouldn’t.  It’s all rather creepy, yet by no means unbelievable… indeed this sort of situation can happen quite often in real life.

Meanwhile Kamala Khan (Ms. Marvel) and Doreen Green (Squirrel Girl) just so happened to be involved in the same programming class as Ember.  Kamala has been taken the class for extra credit while Doreen is teaching the class as part of her undergraduate studies.  As such, both were on hand when Ember’s powers began to flare up and she unwittingly created numerous digitalized constructs who wreaked havoc on the school.

The marvelous Ms. Marvel and Unbeatable Squirrel Girl worked just as well as a team as one might expect and they succeeded in driving off the video game-looking creatures that Ember had manifested.  And this acts to further compound Ember’s feelings of despondency.  She had been bullied, created these constructs to get back at these bullies, and yet they were stopped by superheroes.  Aren’t superheroes supposed to fight for people who are picked on and marginalized?  If she and these shiny, happy heroes are in such opposite corners, does that make her a villain?  It’s all quite confusing for her.

All the while, Arcade continues to egg her own.  He doesn’t reveal his identity, but is instead just a mysterious online presence… some guy out there who knows just how Ember feels and is able to manipulate her loneliness and longing for connection to get her to do all manner of things she might not otherwise do.  He coaxes her further, gets her to escalate things into full fledge into super-villainy.

Using her powers to don a new look, Ember takes on the guise of ‘Emulator’ and takes over a power plant in New Jersey… using its abundance of energy to surcharge her powers and unleash total havoc on the unsuspecting citizens of the city.

Through luck and happenstance, Ms. Marvel and Squirrel Girl manage to recruit Ms. America and Inferno to their cause.  They battle the various monsters and oddities Emulator throws their way.  Ultimately they end up in some sort of otherworldly realm, created by Emulator’s powers… a realm quite similar to a first-person-shooter video game and then later a multi-player online roleplaying game.  And it takes everything our heroes can muster to make their way through and eventually escape these treacherous realms.  Time moves at a different pace in this realm, hours feel like days; and the squad ends up with quite a lot of time to hone their skills working as a cohesive team.

Meanwhile, Arcade ups the anti on Ember, using his influence to coax her into fastening herself into some sort of scientific-looking body-harness.  Here, Ember finally begins to suspect that this online friend may not be as well-intentioned as he may seem.  Yet it is too late, Arcade has his hooks in too deep and he is able to browbeat the young woman into doing what he demands.  Ember gives in and connects herself to the creepy-looking harness.  Of course this is a terrible mistake and the machine proves to be some sort of power-transferring device that takes Ember’s Inhuman abilities and offers full control of them To Arcade.  And it is here that he reveals himself, laughing at Ember and crowing on over how a young woman in need of acceptance can be so easily manipulated.

It’s here that the heroes finally escape the video game realms and are ready to take on Arcade.  Yet Arcade is now has control of Ember’s powers… powers he uses to send the heroes into yet another digitized realm of peril.

Arcade has always been obsessed with creating his own little worlds that he can be a merciless god over.  These ‘Murderworlds’ used to be analog, comprised of various traps and robots.  With Ember’s powers, however, Arcade now has the ability to create this world in a digital format unencumbered by the limitations of the real world.  And he revels at the opportunity to send more and more victims into this 2.0 version of Murderworld.

Struggling in the harness, Ember demands that she will stop him, that she find some way to regain control over her powers.  Arcade merely laughs.  He has attached some sort of power syphon device to the machine and he gloats that he has full influence over Ember’s abilities.

Meanwhile, our heroes find themselves facing yet another dangerous realm where they must all manner of  fierce and fearsome creatures.  Arcade is not as creative as Ember and he basically reuses her ideas, throwing at heroes numerous threats lovely based on video games.  The whole matter is shown to be something of a beta test for Arcade’s plans to entrap The X-Men and gain a much sought after revenge.

The team continues to work well as a cohesive unit, although they’re all quite anxious to escape this realm, apprehend Arcade and save Ember.

While fighting these monsters and whatnot, the team encounters a wisp a sort of guide that is actually created by Ember so to help them.  The wisp leads them to ‘final boss’ level all based on the classic arcade game Donkey Kong.  Where Kong himself is represented by Arcade, Ember is the captured princess and our heroes have to play the role of Mario, leaping over flaming barrels and making their way up the treacherous scaffolding.

They manage to prevail and Arcade appears defeated.  Yet just as it look that all is well, Arcade reappears and again takes over control of the realm.  As long as he has Ember’s powers he can control this entire world and the only way to take it away would involve removing Ember from the harness… an action that would kill her.

It’s all too much for Ember and she decides to take matters in her own hands.  She regenerates the digital gorilla and uses it to tear apart the harness.  Ms. Marvel and the others try to stop her, realizing that it will kill her, yet it’s too late.

The harness is destroyed and they are all sent hurdling back into the real world.  Arcade has been defeated and de-powered, but he’s escaped, having run off the moment that he realized he had lost.  Much worse, it appears as though the process of freeing them has indeed cost poor Ember her life.

In the last moment, however, it is revealed that Ember had built one last feature into the digital realm she had created.  The gift of an ‘extra life’ is an endemic feature to many video games and Ember built one into her own game.  This extra life is presented in the form of a digitized heart and it acts to bring Ember back to life.

Weeks have passed by and the heroes have returned to their various lives.  Still their experiences together have bonded them and they meet up to hang out and catch up.  Together they travel to New Attilan where Ember has been offered a place to learn to better control her Inhuman powers.

Ember still feels like she is a loser, but she is at least more at peace with her sense self.  More importantly, she feels a sense of belonging here in New Attilan… a sense of constancy and acceptance.  It’s a very welcome change for her and she is quite happy to see her new friends come to visit her.

It makes for a happy ending to a very enjoyable series.

Most of Marvel’s events (both in the comics as well as the movies) tend to get bit long and drawn out in the final act; and this last issue is sort of similar.  All the action and adventure in the issue is fun and neat to look at, but a touch perfunctory.  I’m not sure it was altogether necessary to see the heroes venture again through another digitized landscape.
Still, Devin Grayson clearly had a lot of fun scripting all the characters’ dialogue and it is equally fun to read.  You can tell that Ms. Grayson is a legitimate gamer… al the gaming lingo feels quite natural and unforced.  Nonetheless, it’s the non-gamers, Ms. America and Inferno, who manage to get the best lines.  And the action as depicted by the art team of Duarte, Di Salvo and Rosenberg is crisp and dynamic.

After the last issue’s journey into first person shooter games and multiplayer roleplaying games, I’m glad that this issue culminated with the original old school arcade game.  These are the kind of games I’m more familiar with and I’d lost many a quarter trying to rescue The Princess form the clutches of Donkey Kong.

I’m also quite glad that Ember got a happy ending.  She had been a wonderfully sympathetic villain and I never really rooted against her.  She was just a lonely kid manipulated and taken advantage by a true villain.

The new world of digital media that impacts so many of our lives has lots of benefits, yet also lots of detriments.  It can be easy for a kid like Ember to get swept up in it all and manipulated by unscrupulous type like Arcade.

The story offers up a lesson, although not a lesson that is preached to us but instead shown by way of a cautionary tale.  Most all of us seek out that  same sense of attachment and connection that Ember so needed.  It’s a very normal desire.  And the need for it can create a distinct vulnerability to manipulation.

At risk of seeming rather corny, it ended up being a sense of friendship and authentic connection that ultimately enabled Ember to free herself from Arcade’s influence.  She saw that Ms. Marvel, Squirrel Girl and the others were legitimately concerned for her and worried about her wellbeing.  And this empowered her, offered up the strength needed to resist Arcade and create that wisp that helped the heroes escape… as well as the power to recreate the digital gorilla and break herself free from the harness.

Yes, it’s corny… but also how things really do work.  Healthy independence is indeed born from healthy dependence.  Autonomy and self agency is built upon knowing that others are looking out for you.  In short Ember’s ability to form a real bond with Ms, Marvel and Squirrel Girl is what enabled her to wiggle free of the fake bond that Arcade had entrapped her with.

This whole series has been a joy to read from beginning to end.  I recommend it to everyone.  Four out of five Lockjaws with this last issue…

…and five out of five Lockjaws for the event as a whole.  Here’s hoping we will see much, much more of Marvel Rising in the future!

Things have really been spinning out of control for Kamala and Bruno… quite literally of late.  And Ms. Marvel gets an assist from a very unexpected guest star.  All from the creative team of G. Willow Wilson, Nico Leon and Ian Herring.

Kamala and Bruno had decided the best way to sidestep their mixed up feelings for one another was to table the whole matter and instead explore the nature and limitations of Kamala’s Inhuman powers.  Yet doing so seems to have sent things out of whack and Kamala has lost the ability to fully control these powers.  And of course it has all happened at the worst of times to boot as Ms. Marvel found herself facing off against the sinister Shocker.

It still remains a mystery as to what has caused Kamala to so lose control of her powers.  Has it been the result of the electronic monitor Bruno had attached?  Did she experience a panic attack?   Or is it some other, shocking variable yet to reveal itself?

Whatever the case, Kamala has tried to bear through it so to put an end to The Shocker’s schemes.  She pursued the villain back to his bizarre, cobbled-together hideout and managed to best him.  But then her powers fizzled out again and this strange spinning vortex appeared out of nowhere.   At that same moment a similar vortex manifested in the middle of Bruno’s lab.

The issue begins with Bruno peering into this vortex.  Within he sees a kaleidoscope of images, what appear to be dozens of potential futures for his friend.  There is a future where Kamala becomes the President of The United States; another where she is a hardened veteran of some sort of terrible war; there is another where she becomes the partner of The Red Dagger; and still another where she and Bruno find love and happiness together.  It is not just one possible future but every possible future.

Gazing at these images, Bruno sees one where he and Kamala get married… an exciting prospect for him.  Although in this future his past injuries have resulted in his having to use a wheelchair, which gives him great pause.  Yet through it all Bruno’s keen wit comes upon an epiphany.

The great mystery of Kamala’s powers is how she has been able to change her shape, shrink and enlarge without altering her density.  From where was all this extra mass coming from and going to?  Bruno posits that what Kamala’s power are actually doing is borrowing and depositing the extra mass from her own future selves.  Wild!

And this leads Bruno to consider another possibility.  What if all that has gone wrong with Kamala has nothing to do with the experiments they had conducted?  What if this malfunction has actually been the result of something to do with The Shocker?!?

Meanwhile, back in The Shocker’s ridiculous lair, Ms. Marvel is mystified by the mysterious vortex.  The Shocker explains that this vortex is the product of his own experimental tinkering.  He created it pretty much by accident and kept it around as a cool means to get rid of his enemies.

Once more, Ms. Marvel’s powers are all out of whack.  Her arms elongate and just lie at her sides like piles of ribbon.  The Shocker takes advantage of the situation and pushes Ms. Marvel into the Vortex and she is sent spinning away into the neither realm between realities.

She finds herself trapped once again in yet another shapeless void (seems to be something that happens quite often for her).  There doesn’t appear to be any escape.  Fortunately, someone has noticed Ms. Marvel’s presence and comes to her aide.

It’s Singularity, the other-worldly hero who appeared in the pages of A-Force.  Ms. Marvel doesn’t know Singularity in this reality, but they were teammates in the alternate reality realm of Battleworld… a matter that this version of Ms. Marvel has no recollection of, but Singularity does.  It’s all rather confusing for Kamala.  Thankfully Singularity knows that Ms. Marvel is one of the good guys and she helps her escape back to earth.

It’s a rough ride as Ms. Marvel and Singularity travel through the multiverse and finally make it back to Jersey City.  Ms. Marvel is deposited into the ally behind the Circle Q…

Elsewhere, Bruno has dashed out in search of Kamala.  If The Shocker is indeed the source of her loss of control over her powers, then he needs to warn her.  All the stress and exertion has overtaxed the vibranium harness that allows him to walk and Bruno needs to take a moment to recuperate.

All this time he has been conversing with a virtual assistant module from the Xavier School that projects a small holographic image of Professor X.  This virtual assistant is based on the memory, knowledge and experiences of Professor X, someone who himself had to cope with being remanded to a wheelchair.  It’s a prospect that Bruno has to consider and he asks the holograph how he learned to deal with it all.

The holograph replies that he had to adjust on a new outlook on his life.  Full mobility had been something he took for granted and its loss forced him to reimagine what it actually means to live well.  He reprioritize, making incremental progress toward attaining this new concept of a life lived well… until one day coming to realize that he had achieved the goal and was actually living that life.

It’s not entirely clear how all this resonates with Bruno.  Whether he feels the professor’s words are pat and uninspiring or if this whole notion of reimagining what a life-lived-well is actually makes a lot of sense to him.  Whatever the case, Bruno has rested up and is now ready to get back to trying to find his friend.

Somehow The Shocker has managed to find Ms. Marvel at the Circle Q.  He’s disappointed to find her there… he had hoped his device had more fully dealt with her.  No matter, The Shocker is confident he can take care of Ms. Marvel the old fashioned way… with the use of his pulse firing gauntlets.
He readies up to take her on and Ms. Marvel braces herself for the battle.  And just then, Bruno happens upon them.  The Shocker fires a pulse wave and Bruno desperately jumps in front of it to protect Kamala!

And it is here that the issue comes to a cliffhanger conclusion with the promise of conclusion in the next installment

Mayhem!  There’s a whole lot of weirdness packed into the issue; lots of wild ideas, lots of questions answered and new questions posed.  Let’s try to unpack it one piece at a time.

Bruno concludes that Kamala’s powers work by way of borrowing and depositing extra mass from her own multi-pronged time-stream.   Very interesting…   Of course I’m not going to pretend I actually understand the theoretical physics behind this idea.  I guess the idea is that mass is a constant whereas time is in flux… and that this mass can be moved in a hydraulic fashion taken from point A in the time-stream and moved to point B.  No idea whether this is how things might work in the real world, but it is certainly the kind of outré notion very much at-home in the Marvel Universe.

Bruno additionally comes to the conclusion that Kamala’s loss of the ability to control her powers has something to do with The Shocker’s presence.  Which indeed appears to be the case…  Whatever kooky experiment The Shocker had conducted so to create this time vortex does indeed seem to have affected Kamala’s ability to manipulate mass…

I suppose this is sort of similar to putting a magnet near a compass…  The electrical field generated by the magnet screws with the compass’ ability to point to True-North.  Likewise, the field created by the time vortex has also screwed with Ms. Marvel’s ability to borrow and deposit extra mass from her time-stream.

And just as a compass’ needle might spin about wildly when placed near a magnet, so too does Ms. Marvel’s powers act all out of whack… causing her to shrink and enlarge and stretch all out of control.

So when did The Shocker become such a twisted genius?  He’s been inventive in the past, but all this is on a whole new level.  The Shocker has been a lot of fun in this arc, although I’m wondering why a different villain or a completely new character wasn’t used for the role.  For me, it would have made more sense if it were say The Wizard or The Mad Thinker who was behind all this diabolical madness.  The Shocker has usually been more of a goon than an ingenious inventor.  Still, I guess The Shocker has ambitions to rise above his current station and all this mayhem is a result of it.  I mean, bad guys should get good character development too…

Speaking of character development, I’m quite glad to see that Bruno’s past injuries haven’t been put on the back burner.  The harness and Quezi designed for him allows for greater mobility, but it remains a temporary fix.  Bruno is still physically disabled and must cope with the looming prospect of this hardship worsening in his future.

Physical disability is such a difficult matter to understand.  So many people must contend with such things, yet for those who don’t, fully empathizing with the matter is all but impossible.  It’s true that little things, like walking to the bathroom, is a matter that many just take for granted.  And the idea of loosing such ability is absolutely terrifying.  It’s a specter that Bruno must face and it will be interesting to see how he handles it all.

The way that the holographic image of Professor X presents the matter of living while in a wheelchair was intriguing.  I like this notion of reimagining what constitutes a life well lived and making gradual progress toward attaining that goal.  It’s a neat way to look at life and growth for anyone.  Still, I can commiserate with Bruno that the whole matter might feel canned in the face of the daunting prospect of becoming disabled.

There are so few characters in comic books who are representational of people living with disabilities.  The real Professor X is dead and there remains a significant dearth of characters who live with full or partial paralysis.  I certainly don’t wish the matter onto Bruno, yet if he does ultimately end up having to use a wheelchair I will at least be glad to see the matter shown and represented in the Marvel Universe.

Finally, there is the matter of Ms, Marvel and Singularity quick jaunt to a mysterious place where Ms. Marvel briefly meets a young man who seems to recognize her.  Who is this guy?  What is this place?  Singularity whisks her away, stating that her being there will mess with her personal time-stream.
We’ve known for a while that there is something special about Kamala, something particular with her lineage and future…  We’ve seen hints of it peppered throughout her various adventures.  This guy and this place seems to be yet another clue, but it all remains a mystery yet to be fully explored in the stories.

Once again, Wilson’s script, Leon’s art and Herring’s coloring all works wonderfully in conjunction… weaving together a wild tale of nutty ideas, cool action and relatable pathos.  Another great issue and I’m very much looking forward to seeing how this whole tale wraps up in the next installment.  Definitely recommended.  Four out of five Lockjaws!

The long awaited relaunch of Marvel’s First Family continues in this second issue from the team of Dan Slott, Sara Pichelli, and Marte Gracia.

Right from the start the story of The Fantastic Four has been one about family.  And as the years have past by this family has grown quite a bit.  What began with Reed, Sue, Ben and Johnny gradually expanded to include Reed and Sue’s children, Franklin and Valeria.  Then, with the creation of the Future Foundation, a whole bunch of youngsters entered into the family… there were the two young Mutants, Artie and Leach; the super intelligent Moloids known as Tong, Mik, Korr and Turg; former Power Pack member, Alex Power; the young clone of the Wizard known as Bentley 23; a wiz kid from Wakanda named Onome, a pair of fishlings named Vil and Wi; and the kids’ android guardian, Dragon Man.   Quite the household!

Last seen, this extended family had helped to bring about the end of the Secret Wars.  With the aide of the omni-powerful Molecular Man, the entire multiverse was recreated and put back together.  Ben and Johnny were returned to 616 universe yet the others remained behind.  Franklin and Owen Reese, The Molecular Man, were creating whole new worlds and universes and the allure of discovery and adventure was too much for Reed and the others to pass up on.  So they all ventured out to explore these new realms as they were created.

It would seem that quite a bit of time has passed since then.  What has only been a year or so for Ben and Johnny in the 616 Universe appears to have been several years for the rest of the family; and the kids all appear to be much older…  Valeria was barely more than a toddler when last seen, yet now she appears to be around 12 or so; and her brother has gone from a preadolescent to a gangly teenager…  The other kids have grown as well.  And they all seem to be having a blast.

Yet in quieter moments, Val and Franklin admit to one another missing their old life.  They miss their uncles, Ben and Johnny.  And Valeria is growing up quite fast.  Whereas before she enjoyed nothing more than science and discovery and building death-rays, now she fines herself pinning for the sort of stuff many 14-year-olds are interested in.  In particular, she misses the dashing Arboro, the Prince Namor looking alien who had taken a shine to her…

Still, their mom and dad have essentially been offered the sense of ‘happily ever after’ that always seemed out of their grasp and neither sibling wants to infringe on that.

The next day, Franklin is preparing to create yet another universe for them to explore when he suddenly discovers that this aspect of his powers seems to have dissipated.  Reed and Owen had expected this day to come.  Energy is finite and it was only a manner of time before Franklin’s capacity to generate matter on this scale would run its course and exhaust itself.

A sinister presence has been watching the family from afar… waiting for this exact moment.  And now, witnessing that the ‘god-child’ has finally sent his power, she knows that it is time to strike.

Her name is The Griever and she proclaims herself the embodiment of entropy and the inevitable death of all things.  It is her destiny to bear witness the ultimate heat death of the universe and grieve all that has been lost.  And these mortal have been doing, creating new universe and new galaxies is seen by her as an abomination of the natural order… a matter that she seeks to put right.

It would seem that the family have dealt with such would-be threats in the past and The Molecule Man flies up to make short work of the interloper.   And it is here that the true threat this Griever entity actually represents.  She uses her powers and evaporates the Molecule Man, rendering him into raw energy quickly consumed by her giant caecilian-looking pets.

The others can only look on in horror.  This being had just killed The Molecule Man.  Is such a thing even possible?  Reed is not going to stick around to find out.  He rushes the others back into their jump craft fleeing the planet with The Griever and her pets in hot pursuit.

Through this chase, The Griever sets about on restoring order in accordance to her view of the universe.  She destroys the various universes and worlds that Franklin and the others had created.  One by one entire galaxies and civilizations are snuffed out and rendered back into cosmic dust and dissipated energy.

Reed and the others can only watch on in horror as all their work is undone, barely able to comprehend the sheer magnitude of loss of life.

Bentley 23 and Alex Powers device a plan, an appropriate beach-head where they stand the best shot of making a stand against this monster.  Fleeing to this local basically entails sacrificing countless universes that The Griever will destroy in her pursuit.  Reed is comprehending the most macabre form of arithmetic… sacrificing hundreds of world in an effort to save thousands.  Yet Bentley and Alex’s stratagem is snd and he concurs.

Well, Valeria just isn’t having it.
Fleeing to this beach-head means bypassing the planet where the issue had begun… a planet where Val had befriended a young alien prince whom she had developed quite the crush on.  Val is not as coldly pragmatic as she had been in the past… this is a Val going through puberty; a Val who leads with her heart more than her head ands she is simply unwilling to let her friend perish.

She takes control of the jump craft, rerouting it and ultimately scuttling it on the planet.  Prince Arboro witnesses the crash and run over to make sure Valeria is okay.  She is, they all are… but for how long?

The Griever catches up with them, easy to use her awesome powers to do away from the annoyance that the family represents.  Franklin seems to have lost his god-like powers, but he is still far from defenseless… he is still an Omega Level Mutant with powers on par with the likes of The Hulk, Silver Surfer and Thor.  He attacks The Griever, yet as powerful as Franklin may be it would appear that The Griever is even more powerful.

She deflects Franklin’s attack and sends he careening to the ground where he lands hard, creating a crater.  It tales him a moment to recuperate and when he climbs out from this crater he is terrified to see that the entirety of The Future Foundation has been thoroughly defeated by The Griever.

Floating above them all, The Griever laughs and mocks them.  ‘This is the fabled Fantastic Four?’ she asks, adding that she is a bit disappointed that they had put up such paltry fight.

Reed offers a retort.  He states that this isn’t the actual Fantastic Four, this is just a group of children off on an adventure; The Griever would never stand a chance against the real Fantastic Four.

Insulted, The Griever takes the bait.  These humans would dare to underestimate her awesome powers?  She accepts the challenge and summons forth one of her transmaterializers… some sort of device that can transport objects across the multiverse.  She changes Reed to use to bring forth his champions, his ‘real’ Fantastic Four so that she may prove her might by defeating them as thoroughly as she has all others.

It’s a trap, for certain, but Reed appears to feel confident that it is a trap he can reconfigure to their benefit.  He and Sue work on this strange, transmaterializer device and it’s a recapitulation of the scene shown near the end of issue #1.  They activate it and, galaxies away, a large number four presents itself in the upper orbit of earth.

This giant four is not a sign, symbol or call for help.  It is actually a kind of teleportation beam and Ben and Johnny find themselves suddenly risks away, transported across the cosmos to alongside the rest of their family.

It’s the reunion we’ve all been looking forward to, yet there is no time for catching up… The Fantastic Four has a job to do.

The Griever, meanwhile appears upset.  What sort of trickery has Reed Richards been up to?  Fore it turns out that Reed hasn’t beckoned just the primary members of the Fantastic Four, but every member, every hero who has ever stood in among the ranks of the FF!

It’s an awesome sight.  This collection of heroes may or may not have what it takes to defeat a being whose powers are as substantial as those of The Griever.  But they’re certain to put up quite a fight!

And it is on this cliffhanger that this second issue comes to a close with the promise of continuation in the next installment.

This second issue of the series very much felt like a first issue, like we are getting two first issues for the series – one focusing on Ben and Johnny back on earth, and a second focusing on Reed Sue and the kids.  Sure why not?  First issues are fun.  They’re challenging to create I imagine, but if Slott, Pachelli and the gang are up to then I say bring it on.

The Griever is an interesting new villain.  She seems to be some lost member of the bigger tier cosmic heavies (like the Inbetweener, Grandmaster and Living Tribunal).  She certainly seems a very tough customer and, even with the enhanced forces, I’ve no idea for the Fantastic Four will ultimately triumph against her.

Val’s finding herself having a bit of a crush on Arboro was just hilarious, especially in light of how much he reminds Sue of Prince Namor.  I guess the preverbal apple doesn’t fall to far from the tree ;3

The Molecule Man’s apparent death was both surprising and unsettling.  I understand that writing him out might be something of a necessity for the plot.  Yet it unfolded in sort of a coldblooded fashion.  It also sort of smacked of the old school trope where a story will show off how powerful a new character is by having them defeat or kill an already established super powerful character.

All this aside, what really resonated with me in this issue is just how wild it is to see  Franklin, Val and the others all as teenagers.  I’ve known Franklin for a long time.  He’s actually a good deal older than I am, having debuted way back in 1968 in the pages of Fantastic Four Annual #6.  And he’s been stuck as a toddler for most of that time.  Seeing him and his sister as suddenly young adults is quite something.

And also a very much welcome change.  Franklin has been the face of the future generation of the Marvel pantheon for as long as I can remember and it’s about time to see him have some more grown up adventures (all the time-displaced versions of him that have appeared here and there not withstanding).
I’m more than ready to see Franklin and Val take on a greater role in the stories in the future.  Of course doing so is likely going to necessitate a dramatic reduction in Franklin’s power-levels.  It would be hard to craft a tale with any sense of real peril if Franklin could just whisk away any threat with a wave of his hand.  And this seems to be the case as Franklin has spent the majority of his abilities, leaving him still very tough, but not god-level tough.

That last scene is poster worthy.  So awesome to see the whole extended roster of the Fantastic Four together (along with, for some unknown reason, IceMan).  Although I was sort of disappointed not to see Moon Girl, Devil Dinosaur, Ahura, Luna and Adolf Impossible among the extended FF members (then again, Reed doesn’t know yet about Lunella and he’s likely reluctant to bring more youngsters into this dangerous fray).
Will these reinforcements prove enough to put an end to the threat posed by The Griever realms to be seen…  Although I’m sure Reed has still more tricks up his sleeve and I’m very, very much looking forward to seeing what happens in issue three.

Once again Sara Pachelli and Marte Gracia outdo themselves in the art department.  This second issue isn’t as finely polished as the first, but they’re also asked to depict a huge array of different settings as well as a rather large ensemble cast.  All and all, it’s a beautiful comic to behold and the art matches the way out nature of the story just wonderfully.

Of course recommended.  Four out of five Lockjaws!

The Kree have declared war on The Inhumans, launching a bloody attack that has decimated the lunar city of New Arctillan.  Seeking revenge, Black Bolt traveled to Hala to retaliate and there unleashed his incredibly destructive voice, obliterating his enemies.  And yet he underestimated the Kree war-chief, the mysterious and powerful being known as Vox… all but paying for it with his life.  The battle resulted in Black Bolt’s throat being severed, a wound that may very well negate his greatest power: his voice.
Now with Black Bolt defeated and held in the clutches of The Kree, Medusa and what remains of the Royal Family must devise a new strategy to rescue their king and bring forth vengeance for the countless Inhumans who have perished under The Kree’s bloody campaign.
It’s the middle installment of a five-part series, from the creative team of writer Donny Cates, illustrator Ariel Olivetti and color artist, Jordie Bellaire.

The tale starts off with Karnak recuperating from his journey back from Hala.  He had refused to make the journey in a straight line, instead circling back to destroy whatever Kree ships that had been pressuring him.  He has informed Medusa and the others what occurred on Hala, how Black Bolt had been felled, possibly killed by Vox.

Still, there is the chance that Black Bolt may still be alive and his family is going to do all that they can to rescue him.  Crystal lobbies contacting the heroes of Earth; surely there are dozens of allies among the Avengers, Alpha Flight and the newer Inhumans who would come to their aide.  Yet Medusa discards the idea out of hand.  She doesn’t want assistance from these moral and righteous heroes of earth; she doesn’t want the Kree captured or brought to justice… she wants them dead.  No, Medusa has another ally in mind… one who would be much more willing to spill blood and extract the degree of retribution that she is seeking.

The narrative switches back to Hala where Black Bolt is subjected to a gruesome surgery.  Vox’s cut appears to have severed Black Bolt’s larynx and the surgeons sew shut the wound.  Vox and the still-to-be-named General leading the Kree forces watch the proceedings.  Vox declares the threat posed by Black Bolt to be eliminated.  The much feared prophecy of a ‘midnight king’ who would bring about the fall of the Kree Empire has been stamped out.

This surgery is all being performed without any form of pain killer and even now the fallen king cannot scream out from the agony.  His voice is gone and with it any threat of bringing that dreadful prophecy to fruition.

…or has it?

Later, Black Bolt is remanded to a cell, guarded by a pair of Kree soldiers who mock his apparent powerlessness.  He sits stoically for some time before attempting to speak, garbling a mumble over his ruined vocal cords.  At first the soldiers laugh at their prisoner’s pathetic attempt to speak.  Yet Black Bolt continues to try.  His voice has been reduced to little more than a horse whisper, but it is not entirely without power.  He again recites the names of his fellow Inhumans killed in The Kree’s attack

With each name recited, one of the soldiers begins to feel ill.  Soon blood is flowing from his nose as though his brain is being slowly crushed from within.  The other soldier tries to stop him, slamming the butt of his rifle into Black Bolt’s head.  Yet he continues on.  Black Bolt recites the names of Naja and Sterlion, Flagman and Glass Girl.  The first soldier fall over dead and the second is feeling the effects as well.  Black Bolt speaks the name, New Arctillan, and the second soldier appears to suffer a full cerebral hematoma.

Now free, Black Bolt wanders the hall of the darkened prison.  Soon he comes across some sort of cruel operating theater.  There he finds his one time adversary and one time ally, Ronan The Accuser.  Tubes and other bizarre devices are fastened into Ronan’s body, his arm and side has been replaced with mechanical prosthetics… something truly terrible has been done to him.

Ronan is awake and greets Black Bolt.  He explains that this new fanatical division of The Kree had come to the ruins of Hala and defeated him.  The army’s children and families wait for them, wait until all opposition can be crushed and a new, unbeatable empire can be established

Ronan is in the process of being changed into a weapon for the purposes of this conquest.  This is the mandate of this new Kree Empire – kill the weak, enslave the strong, break the unwilling and eliminate all opposition.

Ronan understands what is being done to him, how he is being somehow transformed.  Soon his mind will no longer be his own and his body and strength will be used as yet another weapon.  He pleads with Black Bolt to end it, to forgive him for his past transgressions and speak this forgiveness allowed.  In short he asks that Black Bolt kill him before these villains can transform him into some form of zombie soldier.  Black Bolt grants the request and says, ‘you are forgiven.’  Though it is not directly shown, it seems as though Black Bolt’s saying this puts Ronan out of his misery, killing him so that he cannot be used as a weapon.

Elsewhere, Medusa and the Royals travel through space toward an unknown location.  Medusa has someone very specific in mind, knowing that this being will surely fight by their side once he learns that Lockjaw has been killed.  Medusa feels a certain degree of shame over the prospect of leveraging the deaths of their loved ones so to elicit aide.  Karnak, however, finds a twisted satisfaction in it.

All life is entropy in Karnak’s mind… what better reason is there to bring about death and destruction other than seeking vengeance for a fallen friend?

They arrive at their destination where they find Beta Ray Bill, the Korbinite warrior who wields the Asgardian hammer,  Stormbreaker.  Bill is disinterested in The Inhumans’ plight, he is done using his power to wreak havoc across the galaxy.  Yet he changes his tune once he hears that his friend Lockjaw has been among the casualties.

Apparently Lockjaw and Beta Ray Bill had shared many adventures together and Bill is stopped in his tracks at learning that his beloved pal has been killed.  Medusa’s gambit has clearly paid off.  She has found a powerful ally who will fight for them and fight without mercy.

And it is here that the issue ends with he promise of continuation in the next installment.

An interesting turn of events.  There is not a whole lot to say about the issue in that it is very much a middle stanza dividing the two main chapters of the series.  The first chapter was all about The Kree bringing down the Inhumans, and it looks as though the second chapter will be about The Inhumans getting their revenge.  And this middle section is sort of a brief respite of calm between the two storms.  No big secrets or plot wrinkles are revealed.  And while it is neat to see just how resilient Black Bolt can be, and exciting to discover that Beta Ray Bill will be recruited into the fight… I’m starting to get a little restless in wanting to see the mysteries revealed.  These mysteries being who or what Vox is and where he came from; whether or not there is some greater force behind this new fanatical faction of The Kree; and if there may be other Inhumans whom The Kree are looking to transform into living weapons the way they had attempted with Ronan.

Although it appears as though Black Bolt had euthanizes Ronan, my guess is that this will not be the case.  Rather I think Black Bolt’s actions have freed Ronan from whatever butchery the Kree had subjected him to.  I expect to see Ronan fighting at Black Bolt’s side in the next issue.

It is interesting that, with his vocal cords so damaged, Black Bolt’s powers work quite similarly to that of his son, Ahura.  It’s also a bit odd that The Kree should be so ignorant of the full nature of Black Bolt’s powers.  His voice is his greatest weapon for certain, yet he also possesses flight, super strength and the capacity for molecular destabilization.  So many stories just seem to forget about these secondary powers.  Yet, perhaps Black Bolt is actually using his molecular manipulative abilities to slowly repair his ruined larynx.  I guess we’ll see…

Black Bolt continues to be the main character of the series.  Karnak gets some fun lines and Cates continues to excels at scripting Karnak’s dialogue.  Medusa get to show off her prowess as a tactician, but that is about it.  Crystal and Gorgon are just sort of there and continue to be grossly underutilized in the plot.  I’m hoping that Crystal will be allowed to show off just how powerful she is before the series comes to its conclusion.

Introducing Beta Ray Bill to the story is both surprising and welcome.  There are so many great cosmic heroes out there in the broader Marvel Universe and I am all for bringing them back into the foreground.   Bill’s introduction in the pages of Walter Simonsson’s The Mighty Thor #337 remains one of the greatest tales of Marvel’s cosmic pantheon.

Furthermore, both Bill and Ronan have been shown as among the extended cast for the upcoming Guardians of the Galaxy relaunch by Cates and artist Geoff Shaw… perhaps the conclusion of Death of The Inhumans may in some way ducktail into whatever Cates and company have in mind for the 2019 Guardians relaunch.

Compared to the chaos and carnage of the first two issues of the series, this third issue was much more calm and subdued.  Yet I’m feeling hopeful that it will connote a changing of the tide and that we will get to see the Inhumans gain the upper hand in the final two installments.

The illustration is pretty good.  I’m a fan of Ariel Olivetti’s art, although I kind of prefer his digitally rendered work over his pencil work. The figures and facial expressions are a bit static.  I also feel that Vox should be framed in a more dynamic and intimidating fashion.  He’s supposed to be this ultra-tough customer, but sometimes he looks a bit diminutive, slinking behind the Kree General.

Jordie Bellaire coloring and pallet continues to match the tenor of the story just perfectly.  The grim nature of what has happened, what Black Bolt has been forced to endure, is toned in grays and muted earth-tones and it works terrifically, escpailly when juxtaposed to the bright, natural surroundings of the world where Medusa seeks out Beta Ray Bill.

As has been the case with the entirety of this series, it is difficult for me to try and look at the whole matter from a more objective vantage.  I imagine that for those who are not as heavily invested in The Inhumans as I am all this may come across as an engrossing and thrilling tale with a poetic narration and high stakes feel.  Whereas I’m turning each page desperately hoping for a scene showing Maximus and Lockjaw revealed as alive.

Trying my best to disabuse myself of this bias, the story is pretty cool and the kind of intense, cosmic wildness that I’m normally all about.  I’m going to be optimistic and hope that we have seen The Inhumans pushed down as low as they will go and that what will proceed will be all about redemption and righteous vengeance.

Recommended.  Three and a half out of five Lockjaws

Ms. Marvel’s powers are on the fritz.  Her ability to stretch, grow, shrink and embiggon just aren’t working the ways they used to.  And it’s all happened at the most disadvantageous of times as she and her pal Bruno find themselves facing off against the super villain known as The Shocker.  Brought to us by the creative team of G. Willow Wilson, Nico Leon and Ian Herring.

The Inhuman powers Kamala found herself endowed with are pretty cool, yet like many super powers, they don’t make a whole lot of scientific sense.  And Kamala and Bruno decided to utilize their intellect, curiosity (and need to avoid their budding romantic feelings toward one another) so to try to figure the whole matter out.  This included Bruno using a small electrical device to monitor the surface volume of Kamala’s embiggoning.  Something in all this triggered a feeling of complete unease in Kamala as she found herself both terribly anxious as well as unable to fully control her powers.  It remains unclear exactly what brought this about… and there hasn’t been time to figure it out in that the B-list Spider-Man villain, The Shocker, has come to Jersey City to capitalize on the relative dearth of masked do-gooders who might thwart his nefarious schemes.

At first it looked as though Ms. Marvel would have little difficulty with this second-grade cad… yet once more her powers malfunctioned.  She shrank down to just inches, leaving her and Bruno all but defenseless against The Shocker and his pulse-emitting gauntlets.  Oh no!

The Shocker fires off a pulse wave that is sure to do in both Bruno and Kamala. The desperation of the situation forces Kamala to push through her difficulties and she manages to embiggon herself into the form of a giant shield, deflecting the pulse wave.

Realizing that the battle might not be as easily won as he had thought, The Shocker runs off… with a stubborn Ms Marvel in hot pursuit… much to Bruno’s consternation.

She catches up with him and just when it looks like the two are about to throw down for another superpower show-down, Ms. Marvel’s powers go all wonky once more.  Her body flattens, becomes ribbon like… it’s all quite strange.  Kamala’s consciousness seems to be transported to some sort of neither-realm, a quantum space between worlds.  It’s unclear what is happening to her and Kamala is absolutely baffled by it.  What does all this mean… what is happening?

The Shocker is less interested in it all.  He’s pretty much ‘well, that’s weird’ and then shoves off to his fort.

Yes, I said fort…

I was sort of wondering what the villain was doing stealing pipes and building supplies in the previous issue and now we know.  He’s built himself a good old fashioned super villain lair….  What a nut.

The Shocker has always aspired to elevate his station from mid-tier threat to a cad on par with someone like Dr. Doom.  And every grade-A super villain needs a secret lair, so Shocker has built his own.  It’s very silly, something akin to a little kid who makes a fort out of couch cushions and blankets.

Ms. Marvel recollects herself and finds herself facing down this bizarre ersatz fort, jerry-rigged between two buildings in down town Jersey City… as if this day couldn’t get any more weird…

Well, it turns out that The Shocker’s fort is not as harmless as it initially appears.  Despite his silly wardrobe and poor track record as a villain, the guy is actually a pretty skilled engineer.  He’s built into his fort a complicated Rube Goldberg-style contraption that catches Ms. Marvel off guard and propels her up into the air and right down into the heart of the fort.

She lands before The Shocker who then proceeds to launch into a rather pat attempt at super villain monologuing, explaining how in Manhattan he is little more than a run-of-the-mill bad guy… yet in Jersey City he is a much bigger fish in a much smaller pond.  Now he is Ms. Marvel’s arch nemesis and blah blah blah… it’s quite silly and Ms. Marvel is not especially impressed.

Ms. Marvel’s wallops The Shocker with an embiggoned fist.  He seems defeated, but mutters that he has one last trick up his sleeve.  Just then a spinning vortex begins to twirl about in the center of the room.  It’s unclear what this is, from where it comes from, yet it seems familiar to Ms. Marvel.  Has it to do with that strange neither realm Kamala’s mind had been sent to when her powers malfunctioned?  The answers will have to wait until next issue.

Whilst all this is going on, Bruno has rushed back to his lab, desperate to use his wit and intellect to figure out what exactly it is that has caused Kamala’s powers to malfunction.  With the aide of a not-so-helpful hologram of Professor X, Bruno attempts a series of experiments that he hopes will allow him to understand, and hopefully undo, whatever it was that triggered Kamala’s loss of control over her abilities.

The central mystery as Bruno sees it is Kamala’s ability to increase and decrease her mass while maintaining a standardized volume and density.  It all defies the central tenets of physics.  An object in space that enlarges in size should increase in density; one that shrinks should decrease in density… that’s how things work.  Yet Kamala’s abilities don’t work that way and Bruno believes that discovering the reasoning behind this is key to helping her regain full control of her powers.

To this end, Bruno conducts an experiment where he takes a chuck of proto-matter, imbues it with Kamala’s genetic signature and then subjects it to a broad spectrum of light and electricity.  Of course this is a terrible idea and the chuck of matter immediately begs to grow in mass at a rapid rate, threatening to destroy the lab and crush poor Bruno.

And here, with both Kamala and Bruno facing rather grim circumstances, the issue comes to an end with the promise of continuation in the next installment.

Fun!  There’s a lot of neat action, wonderful art and funny bits to the issue… although it is very much a middle-chapter issue where the mysteries are deepened and little in the way of resolution nor explanation is offered.  Which is a little frustrating in that I’m the kind of person who craves answers and can get a little cranky when said answers are withheld…

My original hypothesis from last issue, that Kamala’s malfunctioning powers were the result of a superhero version of panic disorder, looks to be proven quite wrong.  Rather it seems that her ability to increase and decrease mass without impacting volume may have to do with accessing some sort of an outer-dimensional realm.  Sort of like temporarily borrowing and depositing mass from a place outside of the earthly confines of physics.  And perhaps tinkering with this other worldly realm might not come without some sort of ramification… some sort of affect that is finally catching up with Kamala.  And I’m anxiously looking forward to finding out.

Whatever the case, the narrative offers the art team of Leon and Herring to stretch their collective wings in offering up some very cool visuals.  I especially liked Kamala’s mental excursion to the weird neither-realm.  So much of Ms. Marvel’s adventures take place in the confines of Jersey City, so it is cool to see her in different, more science fiction oriented environments.

Another fun bit was Kamala’s unintentional transformation into a flowing ribbon-like form.  It was both neatly illustrated and made for a very funny bit where The Shocker is trying to contend with the fact that his grandiose plans for a big hero-versus-villain showdown isn’t going the way he had hoped.   It’s clear that Leon and Herring had a lot of fun offering up the art for this issue and it’s equally fun to take it in.

Superhero comic stories these days have been very much reconfigured to fit into collected trade paperback format.  Books like Ms. Marvel, Moon Girl, and the like tend to sell much better in trade form compared to the individual issues.  As a result, there are less one-and-done stories and more tales designed to unfold through the course of three to five issue arcs.  This is fine, I know plenty of folks who much prefer collected trades over serialized floppies.  The one drawback is those middle issues where the plot is sometimes unnecessarily elongated and answers and resolutions are withheld.  These sorts of issues often act to frustrate my desire to know what’s going on.

Although this is likely just an idiosyncratic peeve.  Whatever the case, while this was a very fun issue to read, it left me a touch unsatisfied.  Nonetheless, definitely recommended.  Three and a half out of five Lockjaws!

The Inhumans seek vengeance on the Kree and the king delivers his Black Eulogy in this second issue of the series.  From the creative team of Donny Cates, Ariel Olivetti and Jordie Belleaire.  Recap and review following the jump.

The Royal Family had been lured away and in their absence a new faction of The Kree Empire laid siege to the kingdom of Arctillan.  Led by the mysterious and powerful being known as Vox, The Kree raised the city and slaughtered its populace, leaving behind the ominous ultimatum: ‘join or die.’
Over three thousand Inhumans perished in the attack, among them Triton, Naja, Sterlion, Maximus, and Lockjaw.  Having returned too late, all the Royals can do is gaze upon the ruins and mourn the dead.

All this weighs heavily on Black Bolt.  He had been their king and their protector.  They must have called out his name, prayed for him to save them and he failed them all.  He has lost his kingdom, his people, his brother and his best friend.
Black Bolt tries to grapple with the despair and not give into blind fury.  The Kree had delivered their ultimatum and now it is on him to provide a response.

The narrative forwards to the planet Hala, a burnt cinder of a world that had once been the seat of power for an empire that spawned the cosmos.  It was destroyed by the Black Vortex yet now a new military installation has been erected.

Karnak enters the facility as the emissary of his people, stating that he has come to negotiate a surrender.  He is met by an unnamed Kree general flanked by a pair of Accusers.  Karnak dispenses with the pleasantries in his usual manner and asked what has become of Ronan, the former steward of Hala.

The General replies that Ronan has been eliminated.  He further explains that he and his people were explorers sent by the empire to furthest reaches of the galaxy so to reconnoiter potential areas of expansion.  Their mission extended for centuries, whole generations lived and died while they were on their quest.  And all the while what drove them on was their faith in Empire, their belief that they were serving a cause greater than themselves.  Finally they returned only to discover that Hala had been destroyed and the Empire scattered.
Karnak has little in the way of sympathy to offer.

Still, it was not the Inhumans who had destroyed Hala, why have they become the target of this mournful rage?  The Inhumans are a free people disassociated from the Empire.
The General counters that The Inhumans are not free; they are slaves, tools and weapons created by the Empire.  He demands that they can either return as dutiful soldiers or be crushed as deserters.

It is here that Karnak chooses to correct the general on his misassumption.  He had not come to offer the terms of The Inhumans’ surrender, but rather accept the surrender of The Kree.

The general is disappointed but not surprised.  He calls in his war chief, the mysterious Vox.  No further information on who this creature is or where he comes from is offered.  Only that he is a formidable adversary, speaks in a bizarre third person plural, and appears to possess many of the same powers as the Inhuman royals.

Vox is able to counter Karnak’s precision strikes and stabs him in the abdomen.  It is a painful but not lethal wound and Karnak grimaces through it and states that his king has arrived to offer his statement.

Black Bolt touches down on Hala and wastes no time in beginning his assault.  He allows himself to fully unleash his sonic powers, delivering a ‘Black Eulogy’ by reciting the name of every Inhuman who had perished in the Kree’s attack.  Each name resonates with a seismic blast that tears through the Kree army with merciless destruction.

There is one name Black Bolt cannot bring himself to recite; it would just be wrong to turn this name into a weapon of death.  The name itself is left unrevealed.  It may be that of Black Bolt’s brother, Maximus, but my guess is that it is Lockjaw… the only member of the Royal Family who was truly pure and innocent.

The Kree had demanded fielty or death and Black Bolt chose death.  The army is left decimated yet Vox is left unfazed.  He stands behind Karnak, holding he blade to his throat, and wonders allowed why Karnak had been sent if Black Bolt had resigned himself to attack.  Karnak answers that it was his idea, he had to be there to see it for himself… to sate his own need for vengeance.

It is here that Black Bolt falters in his resolve.  In the past, Black Bolt might not have flinched at the idea of sacrificing Karnak to achieve his end.  But this is a different Black Bolt, very much changed by his experiences detailed in his solo series.  He uses sign language to offer himself in exchange for Karnak’s life.
And Vox accepts the offer, teleporting from behind Karnak to behind Black Bolt.  And then proceeds to slit his throat!

It’s a gory and ghastly scene and Black Bolt falls to his knees, dying.  And it is here that the issue ends with the promise of continuation in the next installment…

As was the case with the first issue, the story is quite well written, well illustrated, beautifully colored and an absolute bummer to read.  Both Black Bolt and Karnak get some neat moments being badasses, yet they also both get their lunch fully handed to them by Vox.  The ‘Black Eulogy’ is an extremely cool and badass take-down of the Kree army… yet ends up a little less ‘black eulogy’ and more ‘red wedding’ with Black Bolt getting his jugular cut Catelyn Stark style…

This new faction of the Kree Army is interesting enough while not especially compelling.  It’s probably for the best that Black Bolt had so decimated them.  Their fanatical tribalism, their being the forgotten soldiers who wish to return to the glory days of the Empire strikes me as similar to the push in American right-wing politics to go back to how things were.  Sort of a ‘Make Hala Great Again’ type of deal.

Vox remains a cypher shrouded in mystery.  I’m intrigued by the way in which he possesses multiple types of powers and speaks in a third person plural, calling himself ‘we.’  I wonder if this is a hint of his origins.
In the past, The Kree created the Supreme Intelligence by taking their most accomplished scientists and thinkers and melding them into a singular being with a hive mind.  Might Vox have been created in a similar fashion?
He also reminds me of The Trikon.  The Trikon was a being Maximus had created by taking three Alpha Primitives and exposing them to the Terrigen Mist.

Somehow this caused the three Alphas’ to merge into a singular being endowed with incredible powers.  Could Vox be in some way related to this Triklon?  I guess we’ll have to wait and see.

Cates does a good job of offering Karnak that same dry, nihilistic vibe that Warren Ellis had in the Karnak solo series.  Ellis’ work on Karnak promoted him from a character I had a passing interest in to a new favorite.  I’ll certainly be looking forward to seeing more of Cates writing Karnak (both in this series as well as the recently revealed Marvel Knights project).

Black Bolt appears to die and the general alludes to Ronan being eliminated, yet both appear on the cover art to the next issue.  Cover art can often be misleading, but I wonder if this may suggest Black Bolt’s being able to survive what looks to be a mortal wound.  Black Bolt does possess the power for molecular manipulation… this could conceivable be employed to treat his severed jugular (although this might just be my sense of denial grasping at straws.

On the subject of grasping at straws, Vox’s teleportation powers has the same visual effect as his the sonic blast that appeared to kill Maximus and Lockjaw in the first issue.  Maybe Vox’s vocal powers are not so much a dissolving-beam, but rather a teleporting-beam.  Again, grasping at straws… but my fingers are crossed nonetheless.

Clearly my being an Inhumans super-fan makes it difficult to assess the issue in an objective fashion.  A part of me sees it as a pretty cool story, the sort of cosmic comic action I’ve always been a huge fan of.  If this is to be Black Bolt’s death then it it’s a fairly good death… one in which he gets to show off his coolness as well as self-sacrifice.
At the same time, another part of me is pretty much like ‘fuck this shit, stop killing off all my favorite characters!’  I sort of feel like one of those angry Star Wars fans who are unable to appreciate the new movies not based on the actual merits of the movies but rather because they are mad that their beloved characters had died or didn’t act the way they wanted them to.

Nostalgia and an ardent maintaining of the status quo has been a major obstacle in super hero comics for quite a while now.  There has to be change in order to keep the stories fresh, dynamic and fun.  And yet many of the readers and creators of the stories grew up with these characters and there can be a huge resistance to any kind of change.  It’s easy to want things to stay the same, for the characters to never change, never die or pass on their mantles to a new generation.

The Inhumans are not as popular as characters like Spider-Man, Iron Man or the X-Men.  As such, there might be more of an opportunity to bring about real, lasting change and new dynamic development.
Iron Man actually becoming Riri Williams, Peter Parker retiring and letting Miles Morales take his place, the older X-men stepping down and affording the younger, newer Mutants to take the spotlight just isn’t going to happen… not any time soon.  There are too many fans instant on returning to the original status quo.

And a return to that status quo is exactly what happened.  The former editor in chief at Marvel was sacked, a new editor brought on board and in short order everything snapped back…  Thor became Odinson again with Jane Foster sent back to the sidelines; Wolverine was Logan again with Laura returned back to her moniker of X-23; Tony Stark is back, no longer sharing his title with Riri Williams and Victor Von Doom; likewise Steve Rogers is back and Sam Wilson has reverted back to being The Falcon; even Miles Morales is set to change his superhero name and no longer share the mantle of Spider-Man with Pete.

While many fans have lauded this return to the prior status quo, I see it as hugely disappointing.  I’m not interested in things being like they were in the 1980s, I already read all those stories and the prospect of seeing it all simply recycled strikes me as pretty boring.  Nostalgia loses its allure when it’s actually obtained.

With Death of The Inhumans, I feel myself asked to apply this attitude toward my own beloved favorites.  And I must admit it is a tough pill to swallow.  Still, convictions only have values when they apply equally to everything.  I can’t very well advocate for change for characters like Spider-Man, Thor or The X-Men without also accepting that same change for The Inhumans.

In one scene the Kree General stands before a screen that shows images of the newer and younger Inhumans.  This includes young Inhumans with connections to the Royal Family (Luna and Ahura) as well as the newer Inhumans, or ‘NuHumans.’ created by the Terrigen Cloud (Moon Girl, Ms. Marvel, Iso and Synapse). These characters represent the next generation, the heroes destined to take the place of Black Bolt, Medusa, Crystal and the others.  And it may be that this changing of the guard is happening a lot sooner than expected.

Popularity for superhero character can be a double edged sword.  It keeps the books on the stands but also can mire the characters in a never-changing stasis.  The Inhumans are not especially popular… which sucks in that the books (despite their high quality) just barely scrap by.  Yet it does leave them unanchored by the burdens of nostalgia.  They can change and evolve and in so doing retain that quality, stay fresh and be enjoyable to read.   Luna, Ahura, Kamala, Kai, Lunella and the others actually can step up and take the place of Black Bolt, Karnak and the others.  Which on the one hand is pretty cool while on the other hand really, really hurts… change is not painless…

In any case, this was a captivating read that stirred up a lot of feelings and hence is recommended but with the caveat that it is a painful ordeal for fellow Inhuman fans.  Four out of Five Lockjaws.